to ties of the 
chool room 

^Bardeen 

Little B ok 



Class.., . . . 

Rnok — 5 £) C- J 

Copyright N? 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




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These books are at the head of the Miscellaneous 
list in the “Annotated, graded, classified and priced 
list of books suitable for elementary school libraries 
issued by the Education department of the State of 
New York, Feb. 15, 1912. 

(From the Bibliography of Education for 1894, James 1. 

Wyer , Jr. , noio New York state librarian, m Edu- 
cational Review, June, 1905 ) 

“Fiction has never before been given place in this 
bibliography, but these stories are so manifestly the 
product of a rich experience and so full of sound 
sense, their abundant and obtrusive ‘morals’ are so 
salutary and their portrayal of certain educational 
shams and evils so vivid, that they certainly deserve 
serious reading by teachers and trustees.” 

( From the New York Sun) 

“The author has the gift of narration.” 


(From the Brooklyn Eagle, June 1, 1912) 

“What Du Maurier did for the intimate life of 
the artist, Boucicault for the Irish rebel, Kipling 
for the British soldier, and Conally for the Glouces- 
ter fisherman, Bardeen is doing for the every-day 


life of the school.” 

(From the Pedagogical Seminary, G. Stanley Hall, Editor) 

‘ ‘Mr. Bardeen is the story writer of American ed- 
ucation. He has already written three books of sto- 
ries of New York Schools, and here prints six short 
ones. To our mind this is by far his best book. 
His style is utterly unpretentious and sometimes 
homely, but there is a sense of reality about the in- 
cidents he portrays, and his writings embody the re- 
sults of so much keen observation of the character 
and psychic processes of teachers and everything is 
described as so real that the stories are most impres- 
sive. At the crisis when Paul Pembroke’s fortunes 
are changed for the better, when he protests before a 
large commencement audience against a fraudulent 
diploma, the victory of Sears over the Alpha Upsilon 
Society, and the triumph of Miss Trumbull are pro- 
foundly moving. In the story of the haunted 
school-room we have almost a contribution to hys- 
tero-neurosis, while in Miss Fothergill’s protest we 
have a character of a pushing but unscrupulous girl 
which we fear is too true to life.” 


^LITTLE BOK 

AND OTHER 


STORIES ABOUT SCHOOLS 


BY 

C. W. BARDEEN 

Editor of the School Bulletin 



SYRACUSE, N. Y. 

C. W. BARDEEN, PUBLISHER 



d-> 


Copyright, 1917, by C. W. Bardeen 



/ 

OCT 22 1917 


© 0.4477157 


~~y%o ' 




CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Little Bok 9 

At the Biltmore 41 

The scientific spirit 59 

Two women’s tongues 97 

In the laboratory 141 

Behind schedule 157 

The blank letter 


185 


t 



Little Bok 



LITTLE BOK 


I 

Agesilaus Bok was a little man who want- 
ed to be a big one. It was not a matter of 
size. He was only five feet two but he 
knew men no taller who filled prominent 
places and were looked up to. Nobody 
looked up to him. He was “Little Bok” 
to everyone, even to his pupils. He was a 
good principal, prompt, decided* syste- 
matic, neat, careful; he got results. He 
was liked, too, but patronizingly. Some 
way he never did anything noteworthy. 
He was common-place. He longed to 
shine. 

II 

Where he especially wanted to shine 

was as an orator. He had a dispropor- 
( 9 ) 


10 


LITTLE BOK 


tionate voice, so that the first Latin he 
ever learned was the quotation frequently 
applied to him even as a child, “ Vox et 
praeterea nihil”. After the change it 
became a baritone, not musical but of 
considerable carrying power. He entered 
all declamation contests and chose the 
most solemn, even sepulchral selections. 
There was a “Stay, sailor, stay and hear 
my woe” that he made a particular favorite, 
and repeated wherever he could find an 
audience. He tried debating, too, and 
when he seconded a motion he did it with 
a formality appropriate to the adoption 
of a new constitution. 

But somehow the only impression he 
ever produced was of mingled amusement 
and boredom. One day he confided in 
the district superintendent, a man of ex- 
perience and sympathy. “Why does no- 


LITTLE BOK 


11 


body care for my speeches?” he asked, 

“They are too ponderous, too solemn, 
too obvious. You should enliven them 
with wit.” 

“How can I become witty?” 

“That is a ponderous question.” 

Ill 

Little Bok thought about it. He de- 
cided that he had adopted wrong models. 
Daniel Webster was well enough in his 
way, but the modem generation wanted 
somebody who would make them laugh. 
So he subscribed for the works of Mark 
Twain and read them through. He found 
them dreary, but if that was the sort of 
thing an audience wanted he proposed to 
learn how to produce it. 

One day when he was in Ipswich he met 
the widow of one of the county principals. 
“My husband left a package of books on 


12 


LITTLE BOK 


teaching,” she said. “They are of no use 
to me and I wonder if you would like 
them.” 

“I should be very glad of them,” he 
replied, and he carried them home. 

They were done up in an old number 
of an educational journal, and as he was 
throwing it into the waste basket an arti- 
cle caught his eye. It was an address on 
teaching, and it seemed to have just the 
quality the district superintendent sug- 
gested. It vras witty, but the wit was 
illustrative, pungent. He read it through 
and then he read it through again and 
studied it and repeated it. He got off by 
himself and declaimed it, imagining the 
laughter and the applause. He made it 
a model: he tried to WTite like it. 

IV 

At a meeting of the county association 
a friend of his was made chairman of 


LITTLE BOK 


13 


the nominating committee. “Archibald,” 
Little Bok said to him, “when I lent you 
that fifty dollars two years ago you said 
if you could some time do me a favor to 
let you know.” 

“I certainly did, Bok, and I hope this 
is the time.” 

“It is the time. I should like to be on 
the list of officers.” 

“Easiest thing in the world, Bok; you 
shall be vice-president.” 

The slate w r ent through and Little Bok 
was elected. The office amounted to 
nothing, hard,ly equal to lieutenant-gov- 
ernor, but it looked well, and the next 
morning when he awoke and felt a peculiar 
complacent calm, it did not take him long 
to recall that it was from the contempla- 
tion of the printed announcement, “Vice- 
president, Agesilaus Bok”. 


14 


LITTLE BOK 


V 

A week before the fall meeting the presi- 
dent of the association was elected to a 
college place in Oregon* and was obliged 
to start immediately, so he notified Little 
Bok that the vice-president must take 
charge of the meeting and deliver the Fri- 
day night address. 

It was the great opportunity for which 
he had longed all his life, but now that it 
had come it overwhelmed him. He got 
together his imitations of the printed ad- 
dress, but they seemed flat, and he could 
not stretch them to cover forty minutes. 
He tried to imbibe inspiration. He re- 
peated the address over and over till he 
knew it by heart. Every day as he worked 
over it he was more and more in despair. 
When Wednesday came and he was farther 
than ever from .a speech of his own the 


LITTLE BOK 


15 


thought came to him, “Why not use this 
printed address? It was spoken thirty 
years ago, nobody knows anything about 
it now, I saw it only by accident, and I 
presume this is the only copy in existence. 
Take a chance on it.” 

Thursday brought him no help, and 
Friday left him no option. When he came 
forward as the speaker of the evening he 
delivered the address. 

He used no notes, he looked his audience 
in the eye, his voice was distinct and clear, 
and he had repeated it till his delivery was 
perfect. The humor caught hold from 
the first, and Little Bok had what he had 
longed for all his life, an audience respon- 
sive to every word, quick to apprehend, 
ready to laugh and to applaud. As the 
consciousness of power came upon him 
he rose to the occasion; it may be doubted 


16 


LITTLE BOK 


if the original orator delivered it better. 
It was the triumph he had dreamed of 
but hardly hoped to realize. 

VI 

The enthusiasm of the association was 
the greater because so little had been 
expected. “It was in him all the time,” 
some of the older ones said, “but he has 
never before had opportunity.” At the 
business meeting the next morning he was 
elected president by acclamation, and 
superintendents from other districts who 
were present asked him to give the address 
at their conferences. The editor of the 
daily journal came to him for a copy. “Why 
the fact is,” Little Bok said, “I have no 
copy. I spoke extemporaneously; I did 
not even have notes.” 

“Couldn’t you write it out for me?” 
the editor asked. 


LITTLE BOK 


17 


“I might dictate it to your stenographer; 
probably I could recover most of it.” 

“Good. I have a stenotypist who can 
take it down as fast as you can repeat it.” 

So the next morning the Daily Record 
had the speech in full, word for word as 
Agesilaus had memorized it from the old 
educational journal. 

It looked attractive in type, with his 
name at the top in thick black letters, 
and he bought a hundred copies to send 
to his friends. 

VII 

One of the marked copies went to the 
district superintendent, who came im- 
mediately to see Little Bok. “That was 
a fine address you delivered at the county 
association,” he said. 

“Did you like it?” asked Agesilaus 
modestly. 


18 


LITTLE BOK 


“Yes. It so happened that I heard it 
when it was first delivered thirty-three 
years ago. It pleased the audience greatly 
then.” 

Little Bok was dumbfounded. “You 
heard it?” he gasped. 

“Yes. It was my first meeting of the 
State association.” 

“Is anybody else alive who heard it?” 

“Yes, indeed, lots of people. Besides 
it was printed in the association proceed- 
ings, a thousand copies were sold in pam- 
phlet form, and finally it was published 
with other addresses by the same author 
in a book called ‘The rewards of teaching’. 
Here it is, the first address in the book. 
You have the book in your school library. 
It was not creditable to the audience that 
no one recognized the address.” 


LITTLE BOK 


19 


VIII 

Little Bok sank into a chair, limp. “Is 
there anything else for me except suicide?” 
he gasped. 

“O yes: only cowards commit suicide. 
The thing for you to do is to confess.” 

“How?” 

“Print a card in the Daily Record , telling 
the exact facts.” 

“I couldn’t do that. I should be asham- 
ed to look anybody in the face.” 

“You would be more worthy to look 
anybody in the face then than you are 
now.” 

“But the disgrace of it. I should feel 
that everybody was looking at me and 
talking about it.” 

“They would for a while. That is your 
punishment. You must outlive it.” 

“I never could do it. I would rather 


20 


LITTLE BOK 


resign and go where nobody knew me.” 
IX 

“What would you do?” 

“Teach school, I suppose.” 

“You couldn’t without a certificate, and 
you could not get one without exposing 
your record here.” 

“Do you mean you are going to make 
this known?” 

“If you do not confess I shall annul 
your certificate.” 

“That is harsh punishment. I am not 
the first one who has used other people’s 
writing for his own.” 

“If you stole my pocketbook you would 
not be the first thief, but I should prose- 
cute you.” 

“If you only knew how all my life I have 
longed to be listened to as I was Friday 
night, and what an exultation it was to be 


LITTLE BOK 


21 


able to play on an audience as you would 
on a piano. Why, there was a sour old 
maid over on the right just bound she 
wouldn’t unloose her features, and I could 
look ahead and see just where I should 
make her shake with laughter.” 

Little Bok’s eyes shone. He was sorry 
to be caught, but he was far from repenting 
that he had triumphed. 

“If you had stolen my money you could 
have bought a very good dinner with it, 
but wouldn’t you rather go hungry?” 

“That is different. I should have de- 
prived you of the money. In repeating 
his address I didn’t deprive the author of 
anything; he died long ago, probably. 
At any rate he will never speak it again.” 

“I am not thinking of him, but of you. 
I am astonished to find this trait in your 
character. I should have said you were 


22 


LITTLE BOK 


as straight a man as I had in the district, 
and yet you not only stole from another 
man but are defending it.” 

X 

“You can’t guess what a longing I had 
for the power that I exercised Friday 
night.” 

“Do you suppose you are the only one 
who has a longing? My wife and I have 
had a longing all our lives for children of 
our own. We have never had them; we 
never can have them. A few minutes ago 
your little boy came in to ask a permission. 
He leaned up confidingly against your 
knee; your hand rested on his neck and 
your fingers played affectionately with his 
hair. You were not even conscious of it. 
For forty years I have longed for a child 
to, caress like that, and yet you think it 
is an excuse for theft that you have not 


LITTLE BOK 


23 


been able to make an audience clap its 
hands. Do you suppose my longing would 
justify me in kidnapping your little boy, 
or even to borrow him and pass him off 
as my own? We all of us have longings 
we cannot satisfy, but we all have more 
than we deserve, and please God, keep us 
from coveting.” 

The district superintendent’s voice trem- 
bled, and Little Bok knew the man who 
was talking with him was a real friend. 
“You are right,” he said. “It was theft, 
and unpardonable. I am sorry for it, and 
I will never do it again. But must I con- 
fess to the public?” 

XI 

“It is your only salvation. In the first 
place the theft is sure to be discovered. 
There are twenty copies of this book in the 
school libraries of this district, and inevi- 


24 


LITTLE BOK 


tably some one will compare your news- 
paper copy with the original. Think how 
much better it is to confess than to be 
exposed.’ ’ 

“It was preposterous to let the Record 
print it, but that night I was beside my- 
self with exultation. I even told the 
editor the address was extemporaneous.” 

“There is another danger. If you left 
the address believed to be yours you would 
have to live up to it. You can’t always 
be repeating this one memorized speech, 
and when you are thrown on your own 
resources your talk will be more ponderous 
than ever because so much will be expect- 
ed.” 

“I realize that. Already I have half 
a dozen invitations.” 

XII 

“But these are only surface considera- 
tions. The main reason goes down to the 


LITTLE BOK 


25 


roots: you can’t afford to live a lie.” 

“How live a lie?” 

“Do you know George Eliot’s Romola?” 

“I have read it.” 

“Read it again; it is a great book. And 
this is its text: ‘The contaminating ef- 
fect of deeds often lies less in the com- 
mission than in the consequent adjust- 
ment of our desires — the enlistment of our 
self-interest on the side of falsity; as, on 
the other hand, the purifying influence of 
public confession springs from the fact 
that by it the hope in lies is forever swept 
away, and the soul recovers the noble 
attitude of simplicity.’ ” 

“ ‘The hope in lies is forever swept away.’ 
That appeals to me. I have told fifty 
lies about that address already. I won’t 
tell another. That card shall be in the 
Daily Record tomorrow morning. But 


26 


LITTLE BOK 


it will be an awful punishment. The 
disgrace will never be lifted from me and 
my wife and my little boy.” 

“O yes it will. Henry Ward Beecher 
denied, and his sin is the one thing re- 
membered of his really great life. Grover 
Cleveland telegraphed, ‘Tell it all,’ and 
you do not even recollect what the of- 
fence was.” 

XIII 

In the next day’s Record was this card 
in bold type: 

T o the public 

The Daily Record of November 6 printed 
an address delivered by me the night previ- 
ous ds president of the County teachers 
association. I dictated it to the Record 
stenotyper; I told the editor that the speech 
was extemporaneous. This was a lie. 
The address was stolen and memorized. 


LITTLE BOK 


27 


It was originally delivered before the 
State teachers association thirty-three 
years ago. I found it in a stray number 
of an educational journal, I admired it, 
I tried to imitate it. When I was sudden- 
ly called upon to deliver the president’s 
address I tried to prepare one, but my 
efforts were so unworthy that I despaired, 
and I yielded to the temptation to pass 
this speech off as my own. This is an 
explanation, not an excuse. There is no 
excuse. I stand convicted of an odious 
and unpardonable theft. My only hope 
is to live long enough to show that it is a 
blot on my career, not a characteristic. 

Agesilaus Bok 

XIV 

The letter was the main talk of the 
county for a week. Strangely enough 
the public was less impressed with the 


28 


LITTLE BOK 


gravity of the offence than with the man- 
liness of the confession. Little Bok of- 
fered his resignation to the board of edu- 
cation. It declined to accept it, but re- 
elected him for the coming year. He gave 
up his presidency of the county association, 
but at the next meeting he was re-elected 
to the office. What especially impressed 
him was that every one felt sympathetic. 
There was a more recognizable affection 
in the relations of others to him than he 
had found before. “Of course he shouldn’t 
have done it,” was the general feeling, 
“but how squarely he owned up to it. 
That’s a man you can trust.” 




9 

At the Biltmore 























AT THE BILTMORE 


I 

On Saturday evening Gershom Keppell 
had been kept so long in committee that 
he missed his dinner engagement and had 
just about time for a 49th street table d'hbte 
at seventy-five cents, such as he used to 
indulge in when a student and his fund? 
ran low. It amused him to recall the small 
portions, the reminiscent soup, the thin 
wine, the cooked-over aspect of the dishes. 
He passed the fish, remarking that he did 
not believe in so much transmigration of 
sole. 

Presently he saw the head waiter direct- 
ing the assembling of four tables for a 
party, and he speculated with languid 
(31) 


32 


AT THE BILTMORE 


curiosity whether it would be a bridal 
feast. No such luck. In they came, ten 
women and one man, evidently a principal 
and his assistants. Hardly that; the man 
was meek, sat half way down the table, 
took orders instead of giving them. The 
manager was the kind of woman who al- 
ways manages. She told each one where 
to sit and picked out the dishes from the 
menu. She arranged to substitute cock- 
tails for the wine, and the waiter went 
up and down the table asking, “Manhattan 
or Martini?” Most of them chose at 
random, but one young woman said firmly, 
“Martini”, and when the lighter glass was 
offered her pointed out the mistake, in- 
sisted on the other, and drank it at a gulp. 
Gershom was interested to see her eyes 
glow and her breath come fast: he had 
never seen a woman breathe just as she 


AT THB BILTMORE 


33 


did. But she kept control of herself, 
though with manifest effort. 

Presently a belated twelfth came in from 
the train, carrying a dress-suit case which 
she shoved under the table at the place 
kept for her. Then she went up and down 
kissing each of the women, and when the 
man complained that he was neglected 
kissed him too, not to be dared. Alto- 
gether it was an interesing lot of people, 
bringing into a city dining-room the bois- 
terousness of a country picnic. 

II 

For a time he saw them only as a group 
of western rural teachers come early to the 
N. E. A. and visiting New York for the 
first time. But presently he distinguished 
one from the rest who seemed out of place 
among them. She manifested no con- 
sciousness of it. She entered into the 


36 


AT THE BILTMORE 


whether he was one of the teachers the 
great convention had brought to the city. 
She thought he might be, for he had the 
face of a scholar as well as the bearing of a 
man used to command. She was flattered 
that he so evidently singled her out from 
her crowd. It ought to be easy enough 
but not every man would have done it so 
readily. Nor had she failed to recognize 
his admiration. “If we had met twenty 
years ago,” she reflected, “we might have 
had something in common. Why is it 
that such men get snapped up so early by 
girls unable to appreciate them?” 

But as he went out she mocked at her- 
self. “He could see nothing much now in 
an old maid like me,” she mused. “Besides, 
he is probably married and has half a 
dozen children.” And she forgot him. 


AT THE BILTMORE 


37 


IV 

On Monday evening there was a recep- 
tion to the visiting teachers at the Biltmore, 
and as one of the officers Gershom felt 
obliged to go. It was a warm night, black 
clothes were burdensome, and he planned 
to retire as soon as decency permitted. 
He had gone down the receiving line, paid 
his respects to a dozen men and half as 
many women, and was edging toward the 
egress when a friend tapped him on the arm. 
“Miss Taine,” she said, “let me present 
Mr. Keppell; you two ought to know each 
other.” He turned indifferently, and there 
was his vision of the table d'hbte . As they 
recognized each other both smiled, “Kis- 
met,” cried Gershom. 

“It does seem so,” she laughed, in frank 
acknowledgement of having observed him. 

He offered to get her an ice or a lemonade 


38 


AT THE BILTMORE 


but she protested and they strolled toward 
the dancing. As they went up the steps 
a couple vacated a little red sofa on the 
right, just out of the procession, and Ger- 
shom seized it. “Let us sit here and watch 
the crowd,” he said. 

“You are fond of watching,” she re- 
marked slyly. 

“I usually get a good deal out of it,” 
he replied significantly. “Did you ever 
see a teacher with so unbounded a waist?” 

“Her waste has become profligacy.” 

“It reminds me of a cow we had that ate 
twenty-seven cabbages and swelled so she 
had to be slaughtered.” 

“Twenty-seven were too many even for 
her four stomachs.” 

“Yes. Her appetite failed to live up to 
its plans after it had adopted the specifica- 
tions. That lady seems to grudge us this 
seat.” 


AT THE BILTMORE 


39 


“Which one?” 

“The one in blue, with something on 
below the waist.” 

“You are severe; remember what a warm 
night it is.” 

“She couldn’t wear that gown at Coney 
Island.” 

“Or her Coney Island suit here: suffi- 
cient unto the place is the exposure there- 
of.” 

“It isn’t a matter of low cut. With the 
same corsage we say of one, What a beauti- 
tiful woman; of another, How much she 
shows.” 

“Doesn’t it depend something on the 
mind of the beholder?” 

“No, because both impressions are made 
on my mind.” 

“Your mind should be on the counte- 
nances.” 


42 


AT THE BILTMORE 


“Poor Euphrosia. She cared so much 
for what money brings that it was a ter- 
rible blow when her father went bankrupt. 
Where is she now?” 

“She devoted most of her attention to 
getting married, and succeeded.” 

“Married well?” 

“Well to do, which seemed all she cared 
about. From all I know they get on 
fairly together. 

V 

“You are not teaching in Kraterhoff any 
longer, I take it?” 

“No. For the last seven years I have 
been in a St. Louis high school, and in 
September I go to the Erasmus high.” 

“More salary, I suppose.” 

“Yes, but the inducement is a narrower 
field and chance for study at Columbia.” 

“Then teaching is all you see ahead?” 


AT THE BILTMORE 


43 


“I am fortunate to see that under such 
kindly auspices.” 

“Why haven’t you married?” 

“The threadbare reason : those who want- 
ed me I didn’t want and those I wanted 
didn’t want me.” 

“I wish you wanted me.” 

“May be I do.” 

“Then I am yours.” 

“You mix the moods. I spoke in the 
potential.” 

“And I answered in the optative. If 
you would only be imperative and say 
‘Take me.’ ” 

“That would sound imperative.” 

“I don’t care what it is if you will say it.” 

“Careful. Some of these passers-by are 
listening, and I may make them my dicta- 
phone.” 

“Give me leave and I will announce our 


40 


AT THE BILTMORE 


“It is only polite to observe what a 
woman makes conspicuous.” 

“In this crowd at least the faces are 
conspicuous.” 

“I think that is true. The waiters are 
looking at us condescendingly but I don’t 
believe as distinguished a gathering has 
ever before assembled here.” 

“The women have strong faces, haven’t 
they?” 

“Strong and winning. It is every year 
more of a wonder to me that such fine 
women enter teaching, and still more that 
so many of them stay in it. Your friends 
of Saturday evening had good faces. Are 
they here tonight?” 

“No, indeed. They came to New York 
with dress-suit cases. To go to a recep- 
tion one must bring a wardrobe trunk.” 

“Who were they?” 


AT THE BILTMORE 


41 


“The teachers from Kraterhoff, Mis- 
souri, where I taught first; three of them 
are the same ones. They were kind to me 
when I began there, green from college.” 

“What was your college?” 

“Vassar, nineteen three.” 

“Nineteen three: wasn’t Euphrosia Gere 
in that class?” 

“Yes. Do you know her?” 

“When I became superintendent at 
Chicopee I found her among the new teach- 
ers. Did you like her?” 

“I didn't know her very well. She was 
inclined to be exclusive. I am indepen- 
dent, so we did not coalesce. How was 
she as a teacher?” 

“What she did not know about getting 
on with children would make a better 
textbook on school discipline than ever 
was written.” 


42 


AT THE BILTMORE 


“Poor Euphrosia. She cared so much 
for what money brings that it was a ter- 
rible blow when her father went bankrupt. 
Where is she now?” 

“She devoted most of her attention to 
getting married, and succeeded.” 

“Married well?” 

“Well to do, which seemed all she cared 
about. From all I know they get on 
fairly together. 

V 

“You are not teaching in Kraterhoff any 
longer, I take it?” 

“No. For the last seven years I have 
been in a St. Louis high school, and in 
September I go to the Erasmus high.” 

“More salary, I suppose.” 

“Yes, but the inducement is a narrower 
field and chance for study at Columbia.” 

“Then teaching is all you see ahead?” 


AT THE BILTMORE 


43 


“I am fortunate to see that under such 
kindly auspices.” 

“Why haven’t you married?” 

“The threadbare reason : those who want- 
ed me I didn’t want and those I wanted 
didn’t want me.” 

“I wish you wanted me.” 

“May be I do.” 

“Then I am yours.” 

“You mix the moods. I spoke in the 
potential.” 

“And I answered in the optative. If 
you would only be imperative and say 
‘Take me.’ ” 

“That would sound imperative.” 

“I don’t care what it is if you will say it.” 

“Careful. Some of these passers-by are 
listening, and I may make them my dicta- 
phone.” 

“Give me leave and I will announce our 


44 


AT THE BILTMORE 


engagement to the entire company/’ And 
he started to rise. 

She pulled him back. “I half believe 
you would,” she gasped. “I shall begin 
to dream of Jack and the beanstalk and 
Cinderella.” 

“It’s much easier nowadays. Why 
shouldn’t we marry? Don’t you want to 
be a wife?” 

“Every woman wants to be a wife, if she 
can get the right husband, but she would 
rather marry nobody that a nobody.” 

“That’s a challenge. Well, I am not 
quite a nobody, though of course I am 
nothing remarkable. ’ ’ 

“0 I know who you are, and you are 
quite distinguished enough. People would 
ask, ‘How did he come to pick her up?’ ” 

“Rather, ‘How his luck stands by him.’ 
Let’s try it and see.” 


AT THE BILTMORE 


45 


VI 

“But why should we marry?” 

“In the first place, I can support a wife.” 

“That is no reason. For that matter, 
I can support a husband if need be. That 
isn’t what I am afraid of.” 

“What is?” 

“That we should bore each other.” 

“Are you thinking of the husband who as 
they were entering the reception room 
begged his wife to be as little damned dis- 
agreeable as possible?” 

“I wouldn’t be so profane. I was think- 
ing of the husband who was asked if his 
wife was entertaining this winter and who 
replied wearily, ‘Not very.’ ” 

“What a lot of such jokes there are.” 

“That is no joke, it is a tragedy, and it 
exists in half our homes.” 

“I suppose that is true. May be that 


46 


AT THE BILTMORE 


is just why I am so sure you are the right 
woman. I cannot imagine myself getting 
tired of conversing with you.” 

“And in six months you would be asking, 
‘Are you talking again or vet?’ ” 

“No. In the first place I respect your 
intellect. I should know your opinion 
was as valuable as mine.” 

“Till we had gone our round. I know’ 
how it would be. For a time you would 
be curious. You would want to know 
what I had done and thought and you 
would ask a thousand questions to get at 
the woman’s point of view. But presently 
the novelty would wear off, the little store 
of topics in which we were both interested 
would be exhausted, you would prefer 
your paper and your book, and presently 
your club, and we should be doing well 
if we maintained friendly relations.” 


AT THE BILTMORE 


47 


“I think that happens to a great many 
couples, but I take it your experience has 
been practically as varied and as rich as 
mine, you have met as clever people, the 
way you are^arguing shows that you are 
as thoughtful and as sensible and much 
brighter. I should consult you not from 
curiosity but because I valued your judg- 
ment, not to say your woman’s intuition. 
Tonight, for instance, I dread parting 
from you. I shall walk home with you 
if you will let me, and I shall hope your 
hotel is two miles off. I am not accustom- 
ed to feel this way. You have aroused in 
me an interest I do not have in any one 
else in the world.” 

“The interest would last till the cup was 
drained.” 

“We should not be draining a cup: we 
should be quaffing from an exhaustless 


48 


AT THE BILTMORE 


spring. Think of the mutual interests 
marriage would bring; what it would mean 
to us who have boarded all our lives to 
furnish our own home.” 

VII 

“Our own home;” she repeated the words 
mockingly, and yet she recognized in her 
own accent just a bit of longing. 

“Yes. We shouldn't build at first, be- 
cause we should have to live together a 
while to find out just what we want, but 
we would own our house from the start. 
What an interest that would be, to find 
the good neighborhood, the sunny ex- 
posure, the deep yard — ” 

‘‘And plenty of closets.” 

‘‘Yes, when we put up a house we will 
have shelves built into the partitions.” 

‘‘And you have the purse of Fortunatus 


for all this?” 


AT THE BILTMORE 


49 


“I have always saved, and there is no 
better investment than one’s own home. 
We can put considerable into it, taking 
care to buy what will sell when we are 
ready to erect our dreams in stone. Then 
we must furnish our rented house.” 

“We may quarrel there.” 

“That won’t be getting bored. Besides, 
the two sets of attire I have seen you wear 
give me confidence in your taste.” 

“Say in my dressmaker’s taste: shall we 
consult her?” 

“No dressmaker does your planning: 
I can see that. What a lovely idea to 
have just the hint of a tinge in that ribbon, 
relieving the white without staining it.” 

“Dear me, a man sees that? It was 
just my thought but I did not hope to have 
it interpreted.” 

“You see how fitted we are to each other. 


50 


AT THE BILTMORE 


Now suppose our home is selected, think 
what a joy it will be to pick up the furni- 
ture for it.” 

“On the installment plan?” 

“In a way, yes. We will purchase only 
the essentials at first and for the important 
pieces keep our eyes open, buying a bureau 
here, a table there, as opportunity pre- 
sents, indulging in extravagances and 
making up for them by enonomies, so that 
every piece shall be bought for all time 
and shall have its story and its associa- 
tions.” 

‘‘That sounds attractive.” 

“I already have the dining-room chairs 
stored away in my aunt’s attic. There 
was a sale in an old mansion to be disman- 
tled, and twelve carved oak Russian-leath- 
er-seated chairs were offered. They were 
made for the New York exhibition of 1851, 


AT THE BILTMORE 


51 


and were bought at that time for fifty 
dollars apiece. The carving on every 
chair is different, and they are as solid as 
the day they were made.” 

“And you paid six hundred dollars for 
dining room chairs!” 

“Dear me, no; I paid seven dollars 
apiece, and I thought I could afford to 
anticipate. That is the sort of joy we 
shall have, taking our time, buying when 
people want to sell, and pointing to every 
article as a triumph.” 

VIII 

“It certainly sounds interesting. When 
you are married and furnished ask your 
wife to invite me to see your treasures.” 

“Let us take off the chintz covers, as 
Merimee says, and talk heart to heart. 
Honestly I want to marry you.” 


52 


AT THE BILTMORB 


“Do you say that to ever)'' woman dur- 
ing your first half hour?” 

“I never said it to any woman before, 
but I don’t find any of my dreams lacking 
in you.” 

“Seems to me I have read somewhere 
in books that love isn’t a bad thing in 
marriage. We haven’t mentioned that.” 

“What is love? I said to myself Satur- 
day night, ‘That is the woman I should 
have married if I had met her.’ ” 

“And if she would have had me, I hope 
you added. But I suppose you didn’t. 
A man always thinks he has only to throw 
his handkerchief.” 

“No, I was humble enough. I would 
have sought you out then, only it seemed 
to me that at my age I had so little to 
offer.” 

“Age doesn’t matter much in a man, 


AT THE BILTMORE 


53 


but I am thirty-five years old. Nobody 
wants to marry a woman thirty-five years 
old.” 

“One man wants it above anything else 
in the world. A young girl would be as 
unsuited to me as I should be to her. I 
want a rich, cultured, experienced, thought- 
ful woman, whose judgment I can trust 
and whose companionship I shall never 
tire of.” 

“You are like a sophomore in his first 
love, spicing up a water-melon rind with 
condiments from your own imagination.” 

“No. As a teacher I have learned to 
recognize the characteristics of a true 
woman, and never before have I seen them 
so combined as in you.” 

“ ‘But- thou art no such perfect thing. 

Rejoice that thou art not.’ ” 


“Poor Wordsworth.” 


54 


AT THE BILTMORE 


“Poor Mrs. Wordsworth. To be honest, 
all women like superlatives, absurd as they 
may be.” 

“Then make my happiness superlative 
by marrying me.” 

“I wonder what this passing throng 
thinks of the little snatches of our con- 
versation that reaches it. Surely never 
before was there wooing in the midst of 
five thousand people.” 

“Let us establish a precedent. Be the 
first woman that ever was won in the midst 
of five thousand people.” 

“I do not know why I should doubt your 
sincerity, or deny that it appeals to me. 
Of course there must be acquaintance and 
reflection, but if tomorrow you still want 
to know me I shall be glad to remember 
this conversation, singular as it is in place 
and circumstance.” 


AT THE BILTMORE 


55 


“I am sure you see I have meant every 
word I said,” 

“Yes, that is what I have appreciated 
most, that you have thought it worth 
while to take me seriously and give me 
your best. A woman gets so weary of 
being talked down to.” 

“Then we will give up our little sofa 
that so many have grudged us. May I 
see you to your hotel?” 

IX 

Mrs. William Horsely Taine 
invites you to the marriage of her niece 
Honora Taine 
to Mr Gershom Keppell 
at Orangeville, New York 
on Monday, August twenty-eighth 
nineteen hundred sixteen 
at twelve, noon 





The scientific spirit 





THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


I 

Mr. Kobell made a good start and had 
the school well in hand. He liked his 
pupils, his teachers, the community. The 
salary made him for the first time finan- 
cially comfortable. He felt about him 
the atmosphere of contentment. 

Of a sudden this was disturbed. One 
day he had an impression of being followed. 
It was absurd, of course. No one needed 
to spy on him. One of his earliest lessons 
from his father had been to do nothing he 
had to cover up, and his life had been sin- 
gularly open. An uncle had told at the 
table of a man with a heavy mustache on 
shipboard who took occasion when rough 
( 59 ) 


60 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


weather kept ladies from the table to 
order thick soup, and he had always re- 
membered the contempt the two brothers 
expressed, not because it was a crime not 
to eat from the side of the spoon but be- 
cause the man had two sets of manners, 
one for ladies and one for himself. Mr. 
Kobell would not have thrust the end of 
his spoon into his mouth if he had been 
Robinson Crusoe; he wrould have manicur- 
ed his nails as carefully if he had never 
expected to see another human being. 

If he was so scrupulous in manners, 
much more scrupulous was he in morals. 
In money transactions not only was he 
exact but he always insisted on proof of 
exactness. He paid all but his trilling 
purchases by check, and for all but the 
smallest he took receipt. If he was trust- 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


61 


ed with money he had a memorandum of 
the amount made and signed. 

In other relations he was equally above 
reproach. He was prompt in all social 
duties. Invitations were immediately 
acknowledged, and required calls were 
made on time. He was courteous to all, 
but the occasional girl who tried to com- 
promise him found him wary and if need 
be frank. He had been for some years 
considered a good catch, but mothers had 
angled for him in vain. His relations with 
young women were not only above re- 
proach but openly and manifestly above 
reproach; he could always prove that he 
had not committed himself or them. 

All this not only seemed so but was so. 
He had his personal failings, but they were 
not of a kind that involved others or that 


62 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


others could complain of. So why should 
he be shadowed? 

II 

Yet he was. He discovered it first not 
by what he saw but by what he felt. There 
was an impression upon him that somebody 
was trailing him. He could not shake if 
off and he began to observe. Presently 
evidences began to appear. One Saturday 
afternoon he went walking. When he 
got half a mile away from the village an- 
other man came along the road after him. 
It was nobody he knew and yet the feeling 
was conviction that the purpose was to 
spy upon him. To determine it, when 
presently he came to a difficult road through 
a swamp, seldom followed, he took it. 
The man took the road, and closed up 
somewhat on him. Mr. Kobell stopped, 
waiting for the man to come up. The 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


63 


man stopped too, at a distance too far away 
to be hailed. Mr. Kobell turned to walk 
back toward the man. The man turned 
and retraced his steps, still keeping ap- 
proximately the same inaccessible distance. 
Rather than be balked Mr. Kobell sacri- 
ficed his dignity and ran after the stranger. 
The man ran too, and ran faster, managing 
to lose himself in the village without at- 
tracting attention. 

Ill 

The more Mr. Kobell thought it over 
the more he was disturbed. He tried 
another experiment. The trains to and 
from Ipswich met at the station. The 
next Saturday he ostentatiously bought a 
ticket for Ipswich and got on the train, 
but before it started changed to the other 
train and stopped at Dougherty Falls, a 
little station where they did not even sell 


64 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


tickets. When he got off another man 
got off too. Sure it was to follow him, 
Mr. Kobell accosted him pleasantly, asked 
as to his business, inquired which way he 
was going, and when the man started 
went himself in the opposite direction. 
By walking ten miles across country he 
could take a trolley home, and this he did. 
W T hen he got upon the car the only vacant 
seat was with the man who had got off at 
the Falls, and who explained that he had 
not found the person he was looking for 
and had been obliged to go out of his way. 
Mr. Kobell had not the slightest doubt 
the stranger had kept him in sight all the 
afternoon. 

It was not the same man who had fol- 
lowed him the preceding Saturday. Ap- 
parently whoever was watching him was 
doing so by proxies, changing them but 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


65 


seeing to it there was always someone. 
So as he sat in school it might be any one 
of the pupils; in church it might be any 
one of the congregation. The impossible 
thing was to be where eyes were not looking 
at him. 

IV 

He grew to spending more and more of 
his time in the office, even then keeping 
the key in the keyhole so that no one could 
peek in. One day a belated mosquito 
bothered him and he took some pains to 
kill it, finally landing his fist upon a par- 
tition that had been put up at the end of 
the office to make a coat-room for the high 
school teachers, reached from the hall. 
It was a dark little room, not much used 
at this season. As he struck the partition 
he heard something drop into the cloak- 
room, and when he went around to look 


66 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


he found a piece of board that had been 
neatly scooped out, a cone with a broad 
base. It had been held in place by a thin 
paste, enough to fasten it under usual 
conditions but permitting it to be easily 
removed. When out of place as now it left 
a little hole through which an eye placed 
close could see every part of the office. 

Mr. Kobell examined this cone closely. 
It had been skilfully cut, with a sharp 
tool, by accustomed hands. Whoever was 
spying upon him had ability and resour- 
ces. The matter had become serious. 

V 

That night he happened to glance up 
and saw a face peering through the wdndow 
of his room. He ran to the door, but the 
person had disappeared. Under pretence 
of redecorating the room he bought dark 
green shades that filled the windows en- 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


67 


tirely, and saw that they were pulled to 
the bottom. In the morning as he rolled 
them up he noticed that the threads in 
the comer of one had been pulled apart 
enough to be seen through. He had flat- 
tered himself all the evening that he was 
out of vision, but a man standing outside 
could have witnessed every motion he 
made. Who could have separated those 
threads, and when? It was becoming 
uncanny. 

The next night he placed a rocking- 
chair with a solid back so as to shut off 
the view through this hole in the curtain, 
and was relieved to find that no other 
had been made. At last he had outwitted 
his enemy. For some nights he felt that 
he had achieved solitude, but one evening 
another boarder had company and the 
hall was lit. Mr. Kobell went to bed 


68 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


before the guests departed, and when he 
turned off the burner he saw a pencil of 
light coming in from the hall. Investi- 
gating he discovered that a tiny cylinder 
had been drilled through the door, and 
any one in the hall could by kneeling see 
his entire room. 

VI 

He was now so disturbed that he changed 
boarding-places. He got a second floor 
with no balcony, where to look through his 
windows one must mount a ladder, and he 
hung before his door a heavy rug, not 
unlike those in an Italian church, with 
many thicknesses. Now at least he was 
secure from observation, and his sense of 
comfort made him realize what an annoy- 
ance his consciousness of surveillance had 
been. 

One morning as he lay looking idly at 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


69 


the ceiling, papered in white sprinkled 
with gold stars, he observed that in the 
centre of one of the stars there was a tiny 
hole. He rose, mounted by moving a 
bureau, thrust a broom corn through so 
as to find the place, and went up stairs. 

He found a big, unfurnished attic, boards 
laid loosely for a floor. Where the broom 
corn came through, the plaster was scraped 
out around the little hole, so that when he 
knelt and put his eye down close he could 
see the entire room. There was no longer 
any use to contend against malignity like 
this, and he resigned himself to his fate. 
VII 

For not one clue had he been able to get 
as to who or how or why. Apparently 
many different people were involved, under 
a guiding hand, perhaps not always aware 
of why they were to do what was asked 


70 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


of them. It was like the story of the in- 
quisition where the cell had an aperture 
through which an eye was always peering, 
sometimes a man’s eye, sometimes an 
indistinguishable glass eye, but always the 
eye was there, and it was said the punish- 
ment was less endurable than as though 
the prisoner had known that the eye was 
always human. 

But just when a solution of the mystery 
seemed most hopeless, one night Mr. Ko- 
bell heard a board in the attic tip and fall 
back, a foot having trodden upon it on 
end. He slipped into the dark hall, waited 
for the intruder to descend, and caught a 
boy sneaking down stairs. The boy strug- 
gled recklessly and with surprising strength, 
but Mr. Kobell was not a weak man and 
he forced the boy into his room. When 
he turned on the light he found that he 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


71 


had captured Miranda Mott, his science 
teacher. 

VIII 

When Mr. Kobell first came to Council- 
boro, a day before school opened, he learn- 
ed that the teacher of science had resigned 
to become instructor in biology in her 
own college, and the chairman of the teach- 
ers committee, Mr. Solander, called him 
into conference as to her successor. “Of 
course it must be a woman,” Mr. Solander 
began. 

“Personally I should prefer a man for 
science work,” Mr. Kobell suggested. 

“Unfortunately eight hundred dollars 
won’t get much of a man, while it will 
secure a very good woman.” 

“We can get a young fellow just out of 
college for that.” 


72 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


“And have our pupils among his hatful 
of eyes?” 

“He would make mistakes, but he would 
have energy and the fertility that accom- 
panies soil newly turned over. I was out 
of college two spring terms teaching. The 
second I taught chemistry in a normal 
school. When I began I did not know 
that muriatic and hydrochloric acid were 
the same, or that ammonia would restore 
the blue in trousers, but my classes would 
stay till night and all day Saturday if I 
would let them, and we really did good 
work.” 

“The normal school took a chance on 
you and won out, but not one in twenty 
who graduates from college is fit to teach, 
and I would rather some other school did 
the experimenting. We can get a woman 
who is a sure thing.” 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


73 


IX 

“I don’t think women ought to teach 
science.” 

“We have always had our sciences taught 
by women and our regents results are the 
highest in the country.” 

‘‘Women can teach what there is in the 
book, but they haven’t the scientific spirit, 
and cannot impart it.” 

‘‘What do you mean by the scientific 
spirit?” 

‘‘The spirit of observation and record 
and inquiry. Women take the textbook 
as final. My great-grandfather studied 
physics at Yale from a ‘‘Natural philoso- 
phy”. I have his book. It says on page 
141 that heat comes from phlogiston, a 
physical substance. If science had been 
taught only by women the textbooks would 
say so today.” 


74 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


“How would it have made a difference?” 

“Women would have been satisfied to 
teach what they had been taught. All 
the great discoveries have been made by 
men.” 

“How about Madame Curie?” 

“Her exception proves the rule, for 
every one names her. But it was her 
husband who discovered radium, and I 
have not learned that her own contribu- 
tions, even after she was started in the 
path of investigation by him, have been 
momentous. Caroline Herschel assisted 
her brother, Maria Mitchell lectured in- 
terestingly on astronomy, but what new 
theories came from either?” 

“You think the feminine mind is in- 
capable of original investigation?” 

“That is not its natural activity. It 
accepts and applies and does it well, but 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


75 


it does not initiate, it does not closely 
question. Before it examines a flower 
it looks in the book to see what it is to 
find.” 

“Don’t men do the same?” 

“Some of them. For a hundred years 
medical students had dissected with the 
book before them. It occurred to a Johns 
Hopkins professor to set his pupils at 
work upon a cadaver with only a notebook 
and let them write down what they found. 
Within a year it was discovered that instead 
of all men having twenty-four ribs, a fifth 
had more or fewer. When the text said, find 
twenty-four ribs, the dissector found them. 
When the instructor said, find how many 
there are, the dissector often found twenty- 
six or twenty-two. That is the scien- 
tific spirit, the unprejudiced discovering 
of what is, no matter what the book says 


76 THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 

there ought to be. To impart that spirit 
we must have a man teacher.” 

X 

“Mr. Kobell, you remind .me of a niece 
of mine who has just that spirit. Her 
father would have been a noted physician 
if he had lived, but he took too many 
chances and caught a contagious disease. 
My sister mourned so over his death that 
she soon followed, and little Miranda was 
brought up by her father’s sister, a well- 
bred woman but a militant suffragist 
whom I can’t abide, so I have seen very 
little of the child. But she always had 
what you call the scientific spirit. She 
shook the sawdust out of her first doll in 
five minutes, and before she was seven 
she had taken apart the old grandfather’s 
clock.” 


“Did she put it together again?” 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


77 


“Not so that it would go, but before 
she was eight she had found out how to 
pull out the reeds of the cabinet organ and 
clean them if any note did not play, and 
was in some ways really handy about the 
house. But she was always experimenting 
and her aunt never knew where anything 
was or in what stage of metamorphosis.” 

“How about animals?” 

“She was fond of them and had remark- 
able power to catch and keep them. She 
could outrun, outclimb, outswim, outdare 
any boy in the neighborhood, and she 
always had scores of pets, not only kittens 
and dogs, usually two or three of each, 
but rabbits and doves and crows and hawks. 
She was especially devoted to snakes, and 
usually had a dozen in captivity.” 

“Was she kind to animals?” 

“Usually, but if she wanted to discover 


78 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


anything about any of them there was no 
limit to the suffering she would cause 
them. As a mite of a thing she would pull 
off a fly’s leg or wing and put it under glass 
to see whether it could grow another one 
in place, or how it got on without. She 
would feed a mouse to a snake and watch 
the little creature quiver with fear. She 
had a kitten she was especially fond of, 
but when it had to be done away with she 
insisted on killing it herself, and took a 
scientific interest in its death struggles. 
She always wanted to know, and she shrank 
from nothing that would tell her.” 

“I do not know that I object to that 
so long as it is not wanton cruelty. She 
killed the kitten more kindly than a dis- 
interested person would, no doubt, and 
what she learned might sometime be of 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


79 


“But where was her affection for the 
kitten? It should have absorbed her, 
so that she would have had no thought to 
give to scientific curiosity. She seemed 
to have no heart.” 

“I don’t know that grief should exclude 
observation. I never saw but one person 
die. That was my little brother, still an 
infant, and I was ten years old. The 
scene has always been vivid to me. I 
stood with my parents about the cradle, 
and I recollect that the instant of death 
was shown by the creeping of a film up 
his eyeballs. Whenever death is mentioned 
I see that film creeping up. He was my 
brother and I grieved for him, but I had 
the scientific spirit to observe and remem- 
ber the phenomena of death.” 

“But you had nothing to do with caus- 
ing your brother’s death; you would not 


80 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


have had him die for the sake of knowing 
what the phenomena of death were. Now 
Miranda creates much of the suffering 
she observes. She will perform an ex- 
periment upon an animal to judge from 
its sufferings what the effect is.” 

‘‘You talk like an anti-vivisectionist. 
These experiments on beasts are necessary 
to learn how to save human life.” 

‘‘Possibly, in medical education. But 
Miranda wants knowledge for its own 
sake and experiments on everything.” 
XI 

‘‘Where was your niece educated?” 

‘‘Vassar first; then a year in the Johns 
Hopkins medical college. She planned 
to become a physician, but decided that 
women do not have an equal show in prac- 
tice. So she dropped out, and has been 
teaching in her home school.” 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


81 


“Science, I suppose.” 

“Yes, and quite successfully I am told; 
I had' a talk with her principal this sum- 
mer. But there is only a small equipment 
there, so she is cramped.” 

“Do you suppose she could get released?” 

“O yes. She is teaching at a low salary 
with that proviso. You are not thinking 
of asking her to come here?” 

“From what you say I think she is just 
the woman we want. You needn’t worry 
over her scientific spirit, if she really has 
it.” 

“Of course I should like to have her 
here, if she will come without her aunt. 
If you think best I will telegraph for her.” 
XII 

Miss Mott proved to be not at all what 
Mr. Kobell had pictured her. She was 
below medium size, graciously friendly 


82 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


in manner, quick and bright in conversa- 
tion, without a hint of the blue-stocking 
or the scientist. She knew her pupils 
by their first names before the end of the 
initial recitations, and by the close of the 
term there were half a dozen homes where 
she could drop in to any meal uninvited 
and be welcome. She had a way of get- 
ting at people and making them like her 
and feel cordial toward her. Faces lit up 
when she approached. 

Yet she certainly had the scientific 
spirit . She carried on an enormous am ount 
of laboratory work, and made so much 
more use of notebooks than of textbooks 
that Mr. K obeli had his doubts about the 
January regents. The results surprised 
him. The more difficult the question the 
better average the classes showed. They 
were especially strong in the mathemati- 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


83 


cal problems. They could calculate the 
ohms and the dynes and the poundals 
with exactness and certainty. 

He found too that she did not confine 
class work to the day’s lesson. Anything 
that came up and interested the class she 
was ready to discuss, especially anything 
that required an explanation. She taught 
her pupils to think, and sent them home 
poring over questions that surprised and 
sometimes appalled their parents. Her 
pupils never found a. recitation too long. 
If it came the last in the afternoon they 
would sometimes ask when the bell rang, 
“Do we need go yet?” 

XIII 

And this successful, popular teacher 
was alone in his room at nine o’clock, dress- 
as a boy so far as she was dressed at all 
after the scuffle, caught in effect burglar- 


84 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


izing. When he recognized her, he looked 
her full in the face, and asked, “Well?” 

She looked him just as fully in the face, 
and repeated, “Well?” 

“I suppose you have some explanation,” 
he suggested. 

“Certainly: a mere scientific experi- 
ment.” 

“Indeed. And the topic?” 

“I wanted to study the effect of spying 
upon a man with nothing to conceal.” 

“I being the man?” 

“Yes. You seemed to me the most 
complacent man I had ever met.” 

“Conceited, I suppose you mean.” 

“No,” she replied discriminatingly. 
“The gradation is contented, complacent, 
conceited. Complacent is only con- 
sciously contented. Conceited is ostenta- 
tiously and offensively self-satisfied.” 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


85 


On the brink of state prison, and yet she 
could split hairs as though nothing in the 
world mattered except distinguishing syn- 
onyms. 

“You are nearer contented than conceit- 
ed,” she added, “but you are complacent.” 

“And you wanted to spy me out of it?” 

“I wanted to see whether spying would 
scare you out of it. Theoretically, if a 
man has nothing to conceal he need not 
mind being spied upon; practically, I was 
sure it would make you uneasy.” 

“What right had you to make me un- 
easy?” 

“There must be experiments or there 
could be no scientific progress.” 

“Then if you thought you had discovered 
the germs of infantile paralysis you would- 
n’t mind trying them on me?” 

“I shouldn’t go so far as that. The 


86 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


experiment I have tried is really a com- 
pliment to you. There may be other men 
with as open a record as yours but I don’t 
expect to meet one. Hence my only chance 
was with you.” 

“You have certainly been bold.” 

“Not so very. I run in and out of all 
these houses. I easily found opportunity 
to spread the threads in your green shade 
and to bore the hole in the door. This 
house I visit often, and had no difficulty 
in finding a chance to slip into the attic. 
Tonight Mrs. Filer has gone to a sewing 
circle and the maid is out. At this in- 
stant you and I are the only persons in 
the house. If my flash-light had not given 
out and the board tipped, I should have 
been at home ten minutes ago, and you 
would have got a typewritten slip telling 
what you were doing at eight-fifteen.” 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


87 


“How much further were you meaning 
to carry your exeriments?” 

“Considerably. You have stood them 
pretty well so far. You have been annoyed 
but you have not been made doubtful of 
yourself. What I want to know is whether 
spying will make a man conscious of guilt 
he has never committed.” 

“Then you meant to continue till I was 
driven to be morose or insane?” 

“If spying will do it, or to be convinced 
that spying will not do it.” 

XIV 

“You will have a new experiment to 
consider now.” 

“What is that?” 

“The problem what a man does with a 
woman he detects in her shameless plot- 
ting against his happiness.” 

“That is no problem.” 


88 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


“Why not?” 

“I know what you will do. When I was 
a child I used to argue with my aunt 
as to the omnipotence of God. Can He 
be untrue to Himself, I used to ask, and 
when she said no, then I said He was more 
limited than any of His creatures, for the 
rest of us could. You are not God, but 
you are of so high a type of man that you 
cannot be untrue to yourself, so it is easy 
to see what you will do.” 

“What is it?” 

“First, you will get me safely out of the 
house, seeing me to the door at a time 
when nobody will observe me, and walking 
near enough home with me so that I can- 
not be annoyed. Then you will forget it.” 

XV 

“Now let me guess. The question is 
which I shall ring for to come here, the 
chief of police or your uncle.” 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


89 


“You make me smile, Mr. Kobell. You 
could not even contemplate either one. 
If you think you could, I know you better 
than you know yourself. My uncle told 
me of your conversation about the scien- 
tific spirit. That is what I have manifest- 
ed, and you should be the last to blame 
me for that.” 

“I think it will be simplest to telephone 
for the chief of police directly.” 

“I should like to keep this discussion 
on an altruistic plane, Mr. Kobell, but 
before you lift the receiver it might be 
well for you to consider what will follow 
if the chief of police finds one of your teach- 
ers here partly dressed in boy’s clothes at 
nine o’clock at night.” 

“Are you trying to blackmail me?” 

“Not at all; I am only pointing out to 


90 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


you a view of the situation that seems to 
have escaped you.” 

“It is not my fault that you are in my 
room.” 

“You certainly would not intimate that 
I came in here voluntarily;” and she 
looked significantly at her torn coat. 

“I pulled you in here because I supposed 
you to be a burglar.” 

“That is true. You know it and I know 
it. I don’t think my uncle would believe 
it. I know the chief of police would not 
believe it. You would see headlines in 
all the newspapers, ‘Woman teacher found 
partly dressed in boys clothes in prin- 
cipal’s room at nine o’clock at night’.” 

“When you are tried for entering a house 
feloniously the facts will come out.” 

“If by any chance you should bring suit 
it would be months before the trial, and 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


91 


meantime the salacious story would have 
gone all over the state. The fact that 
I am here cannot be denied. The explana- 
tion of it let him believe who will.” 

“You seem to enjoy the situation.” 

“I admit it is interesting. Nothing 
could be farther from the truth than what 
every one would infer, and yet if it becomes 
known to a human being that I am here 
as I am, irreparable harm will be done to 
me, to you, to the school, and to the pro- 
fession of teaching.” 

“I suppose there is some truth in that. 
I will see that you get home as you propose, 
and we will discuss afterward what shall 
be done about it. We had better go at 
once, before my landlady gets back.” 
XVI 

The next morning after opening exer- 
cises he called her into the office. “It 


92 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


would be better to resign at once/' he 
sai^. “You can make some excuse, and 
I will see that it is accepted." 

“Resign? I haven’t the remotest idea 
of resigning," she replied. 

"You belong in state prison," he replied 
rather hotly, “and you should be more 
than satisfied that I permit you to resign." 

“I thought you were convinced last 
night that there must be no publicity." 

“I do not want publicity, but I do not 
want a burglar in my school as a teacher." 

“I am not a burglar. A burglar is a man 
who steals. I have stolen nothing." 

“You were stealing more than money or 
jewelry; you were purposely stealing peace 
of mind, by felonious means." 

“You are stopped from proving it, as 
we agreed last night. The only thing left 
for you to do now is to forget it. For one 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 93 

thing, you could not make any one believe 
I was there. If you had called the chief 
of police then and he had seen me that 
would be one thing. For you to say I was 
there is quite another.” 

4 ‘Then you positively refuse to resign?” 

“Absolutely. It is absurd even to think 
of it. But it may be some satisfaction to 
you that I am through spying upon you. 
That is no longer necessary. What is 
more, you are no longer a proper subject. 
You are now a man who has something to 
conceal, and who has to conceal it. You 
are still an object of study, but in a new 
role. I shall watch you now to see how a 
man with something to conceal covers it 
up. But I shan’t have to spy on you to 
discover. You will show it all the time.” 

“Are you really human, or are you a 


female Mephistopheles?” 


94 


THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT 


“Now the scientific spirit is aroused in 
you. Watch me and see. You may 
even spy on me if you like, and I will not 
bluster about sending you to prison for it.” 


Two women’s tongues 














































































































































































































































































































































































































V 




« 








































































































































































































TWO WOMEN’S TONGUES 


I 

“I really couldn’t tell you, m’um. The 
wreckin’ train ain’t gone by yet. It must 
be five or six hours anyway.” 

It was most annoying. Miss Applegate 
was not an adaptable person. She was so 
accustomed to choosing the line of least 
resistance that any knot in it jarred her. 
She had planned to get dinner at her own 
boarding-place, and here she was twenty 
miles from it, train off the track, too far 
to walk, too costly to hire a conveyance. 
She considered herself an abused person. 

She had not thought anything could add 
to her discomfort, but there was some- 
thing and it added. When the eastern 
( 97 ) 


98 


two women’s tongues 


train came in, Miss Littrow got off. She 
was another teacher at Atherton, like Miss 
Applegate expecting to find a train north. 
The two had taught together nine years, 
and every year had liked each other less. 
They met civilly, but each avoided the 
other and the other knew it. Now they 
were thrown into enforced companionship 
for an afternoon. 

II 

Luckily they had a common need. It 
was after twelve and they must get some- 
thing to eat. There was no hotel. The 
station was solitary, no building within a 
furlong. “Is there any one near here who 
serves meals?” asked Miss Littrow of 
the station agent. 

He took off his hat and scratched his 
head. “There ain’t many that wants 
meals here,” he said, “but sometimes Miss 


two women’s tongues 


99 


Speke gits up suthin’ . Y ou cross the bridge 
an’ turn to the lef’ an’ ’bout ’arf a mile on 
you’ll see a house with new clapboards on 
that ain’t painted. That’s her’n.” 

The two teachers followed directions. 
“Why, yes,” the woman said with hearty 
welcome; “come right in.” She served a 
wholesome farmer’s dinner promptly and 
acceptably and charged them only half 
what they expected, so they came away 
cheered and more favorably disposed to- 
ward each other than either would have 
thought possible. It was a hot day, and 
instead of sitting in the station they went 
over to a woods near by, the agent assuring 
them the train would whistle a mile below, 
after which there would be plenty of time 
to get back to the station. 

Ill 

They found comfortable seats under the 
trees, and as neither happened to have 


100 


two women’s tongues 


reading matter along they settled them- 
selves for an afternoon talk, some mutual 
curiosity having already developed. 

“Yes,” Miss Applegate acknowledged, 
“he says I can’t stay another year. He 
discussed my case as scientifically and cold- 
bloodedly as if I had been a devil’s paint- 
brush that ought to be hoed up. He said 
I was probably a fair aveage teacher when 
I began, and if I had married in a year or 
two as I of course wanted to I should pro- 
bably have made a fair average wife and 
mother. But that when I found I wasn’t 
going to get married and should have to 
keep on teaching, the cat part of my nature 
developed, and I began to look for soft 
corners where I could lie undisturbed. 
If a boy was anything out of the ordinary 
it annoyed me, and instead of studying 
him I tried to get rid of him. I didn’t 


two women’s tongues 


101 


want any new ideas and I avoided any 
work I could get out of. In short I was 
a weed in the school garden, and must be 
uprooted. This was absolutely my last 
year.” 

“The impudence of it,” sympathized 
Miss Littrow, “when you’ve been here a 
dozen years.” 

“And might have been here a dozen 
more under any other principal. No 
other man has complained of my work. 
I lack three years of my twenty-five for a 
pension, and if I am turned out here there 
won’t be the least use of trying to get an- 
other place.” 

“I am exactly in the same fix,” confessed 
Miss Littrow. “The principal at the 
normal told me when I came here that it 
was my last chance.” 


102 


two women’s tongues 


“Why, has Mr. Romney given you 
warning, too?” 

“Rather. He talked to me a good deal 
worse than he did to you.” 

“What did he say?” 

“The meanest things. He said I was by 
nature discontented, envious, and a mis- 
chief-maker. He doubted whether he 
ought to let me finish the year, but out 
of respect for my nine years service here 
and my age — the impudence of him — he 
would let me stay till June.” 

“No use to appeal to the board, of 
course.” 

“No, they swear by him. I heard the 
president say to the secretary that this 
is the first year since he has been on the 
board that he has felt everything could be 
safely left to the principal.” 


two women’s tongues 


103 


“Then what is to become of us? I 
haven’t a hundred dollars in the world.” 

IV 

“I haven’t a great deal, nothing like 
enough to live on. Our only hope is to 
get rid of Mr. Romney before the board 
elects.” 

“How can we get rid of him? He grows 
stronger every day.” 

“What if we could get his character 
under suspicion?” 

“Is there some hidden chapter in his 
history?” 

“No. I looked that up when I saw he 
wasn’t going to like me. His record is 
clean.” 

“Then how are we going to hurt him?” 

“Start up some scandal about him.” 

“How can we do that, with no basis?” 


104 


two women’s tongues 


“Miss Applegate, how far are you game?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“If I show you how we can drive him 
out of this school and save our places and 
our pensions, will you stand by me and 
carry it through?” 

“Shan’t we get into trouble ourselves?” 

“No. On the contrary we shall seem 
to everybody to be the only ones who are 
loyal to him. I have thought it all out.” 
V 

“Explain.” 

“This is on the dead level. Cross your 
heart.” 

“Of course.” 

“You know how fond he is of Marcella 
Ticknor?” 

“Why, he is trying to get a state scholar- 
ship for her so that she can go to college.” 

“Yes, that is really all there is of it, and 


two women’s tongues 


105 


yet if you will stand by me we can drive 
him out of town.” 

“Why, Charity Littrow, what do you 
mean?” 

“You know he stays after school with 
her almost every day till five and some- 
times six o’clock.” 

“Yes, but always in the big room, with 
the door wide open.” 

“But nobody there; the janitor often 
goes away.” 

“He isn’t that kind of a man.” 

“That will make no difference if we get 
people to suspecting.” 

“And she is a thoroughly good girl.” 

“No doubt. They will blame him all 
the more.” 

“But how is the story to be started?” 

“I’ll tell you. I couldn’t do it alone 
and you couldn’t, but together we can 


106 


two women’s tongues 


manage it beautifully. You know every- 
body in the Presbyterian church; I know 
everybody in the Methodist. That means 
the whole village. Be on the lookout for 
a time when two or three of your worst 
gossips are together, and if possible wait 
till somebody speaks of Mr. Romney: 
you don’t want to seem to be lugging it 
in. Watch for your chance and speak up 
warmly for Mr. Romney, saying it is a 
shame that people should start stories 
about him. The gossips will be crazy to 
know there is any scandal they haven’t 
had a chance to spread, and the more re- 
luctant you are to tell the more determined 
they will be to worm it out of you. Men- 
tion no names, but just let it be extorted 
that you have heard that people were say- 
ing he couldn’t be staying with Marcella 
night after night for any good purpose, 


two women’s tongues 


107 


and the rest will take care of itself. I will 
do the same in my church, and the whole 
village will be astir.” 

“But they will both deny it.” 

“What good will that do them? People 
are only too ready to believe the worst of 
others, especially in that relation. Once 
couple the names of a married man and a 
young girl and suspicion will always hang 
over them.” 

“Suppose we get found out.” 

“For what? We haven’t said anything 
except that the story isn’t true. We are 
going to get lots of credit for standing by 
the principal. Before he leaves town he 
will probably come to thank us for being 
his only friends.” 

“Have we a right to ruin his career?” 

“It won’t ruin him. Men have so many 
ways to earn a living. Turn us out and 


108 


two women’s tongues 


we are two helpless old maids. Turn him 
out and he will start a teachers agency.” 

“And Marcella?” 

“It will cloud her name a little for a 
while, but she is young and after she goes 
to college nobody will remember it.” 

“It doesn’t seem right to injure them 
both by a false charge.” 

“Adalina Applegate, every animal has 
its weapon of defence. A woman’s is her 
tongue. If we were starting this story 
wantonly, just to make trouble, it would 
be unpardonable. But we are doing it 
to save our places and our pensions: it is 
the only way we can have anything to live 
on in our old age. We are simply availing 
ourselves of our one weapon.” 

“It seems to me mightily like the 
skunk’s.” 

“The skunk has a right to live. It has 


two women’s tongues 


109 


beautiful fur, and farmers are learning 
that it is a useful animal. Yet except 
for the weapon it gets from God it would 
be extinct.” 

“I must say I don’t like to go into this, 
Charity.” 

“Still less do you want to die in the 
poorhouse, Adalina; and the choice is be- 
tween them.” 

“Are you sure we shan’t get caught?” 

“How can we, unless we betray each 
other?” 

“Of course I wouldn’t do that.” 

“I should think not: you couldn’t af- 
ford to, for we must sink or swim together. 
Are you in it with me?” 

There was more argument, but Miss 
Littrow’s stronger mind consciously bore 
down upon Miss Applegate’s, and before 
the train arrived the agreement was made. 


110 


two women’s tongues 


Miss Littrow took care to provide that the 
first dissemination of the rumor should be 
by Miss Applegate. 

VI 

Marcella Ticknor was an orphan whom 
a second cousin had allowed to live with 
her by helping in the family. At the be- 
ginning of the school year she was hoping 
to graduate in June and teach a rural school 
on an academic certificate. She had it 
dimly in mind that sometime she might 
exchange it for a rural renewable, but her 
dreams of old age were of keeping a dis- 
trict school till she could retire on a pen- 
sion. “I am not the kind of girl boys care 
for,” she had concluded before she reached 
her teens. 

To Mr. Romney she seemed at first so 
hopeless that he did not think she could 
be graduated this year. Had not the 


two women’s tongues 


111 


general standard of the school been low he 
would have dropped her into the junior 
class. Her scholarship was ragged, and 
she had no hold of fundamentals, such 
as the inevitableness of a geometry demon- 
stration or the structure of a Latin sen- 
tence. 

But when she read her first composition 
he thought she must have copied it. In 
fact he was so indignant that he questioned 
her on it before the class, expecting to de- 
monstrate that she did not even compre- 
hend what she had written. To his aston- 
ishment she showed that her work was 
only the fringe of her thought, and went 
on to develop the subject with a grasp that 
amazed him. He kept her after school 
and talked with her. He had stumbled 
upon a prize, a girl with capacity that 
resembled genius. 


112 


TWO WOMEN S TONGUES 


Of course she must go to college. She 
had made herself so useful and competent 
in her cousin’s family that it would be 
comparatively easy to find a like boarding- 
place, and Mr. Romney had friends who 
would be glad to furnish the money for 
clothing and incidental expenses. There 
was only the tuition to provide for, and 
that the new scholarship law would supply 
if at the June regents examinations she 
could rank among the first five in the 
assembly district. 

That was not easy to secure. She would 
have to be put through a thorough drill 
in the review^ as well as trained in the 
subjects of the year. Practically she would 
have to do double work herself, and she 
would have to have double teaching. He 
put the case before her. “I will under- 


two women’s tongues 


113 


take the teaching,” he said, ‘‘if you will 
do the home work.” 

She grasped at the opportunity, rising 
to the new conception that he inspired of 
her possibilities. There would be no 
trouble about her English or her history, 
but her algebra, her geometry, and her 
Latin must be rebuilt. Mr. Romney 
undertook it, the more willingly because 
there was no other pupil in school who had 
a possibility of winning a scholarship. 
So they stayed together after school, al- 
ways half an hour, sometimes twice or 
three times that. Both felt proud of what 
they were accomplishing. 

VII 

On Saturday afternoon Marcella went 
out to the woods for spring flowers, glad of 
the warm sunshine which seemed to de 
velop her career as well as the blossoms. 


114 


two women’s tongues 


Aurelia Krupp, the greediest gossip in the 
village, saw her go and followed her, plan- 
ning to gain her confidence and find out 
what there was to the Romney story. 
Marcella would rather have been alone, 
but she was too happy to refuse compan- 
ionship and she talked freely of her pros- 
pects. “Mr. Romney is so kind and pa- 
tient,” she said. 

“And so fond of you,” suggested Aure- 
lia. 

Marcella had never thought of that. 
Mr. Romney was doing a great deal for 
her, for her sake and the sake of the school, 
but she had never thought there was per- 
sonal liking behind it. In fact she had 
got out of the way of looking for personal 
liking. Her cousin gave her a place to 
eat and sleep and allowed her to sit at the 
table, but really looked at her as rather a 


two women’s tongues 


115 


servant than a relative, and she was used 
to being snubbed everywhere. Till Mr. 
Romney had encouraged her she felt like 
apologizing for being alive, and hoped 
only to get through the world without 
being conspicuously in other people’s way. 
Now she had learned to look for something 
more in the way of a career, but she thought 
of it only as the work she could do; it had 
not occurred to her that any one would 
feel affection for her. So Aurelia’s sug- 
gestion flattered her and was welcome. 
She even blushed, as Aurelia was quick 
to observe. “Do you really think so?” 
she asked. 

Aurelia smiled complacently: this was 
going to be a profitable afternoon. “There 
can be no doubt of that,” she replied. 
“Is it possible that you are the last to see 
it?” 


116 


two women’s tongues 


“I hope I am becoming less stupid and 
ignorant than he found me,” said Mar- 
cella, “but I am still very crude. I am 
glad if he thinks all his work is not thrown 
away.” 

“He doesn’t think of you any more as a 
pupil,” insinuated Aurelia archly. “He 
is in love with you.” 

“Why, Aurelia Krupp,” exclamed Mar- 
cella indignantly, “you ought to be asham- 
ed to say such a thing. And he a mar- 
ried man.” 

“With a wife who was his equal when 
he married her but who hasn’t grown with 
him and is no companion for him and has 
borne him no children and is an invalid.” 

“And whom he loves with chivalrous 
devotion.” 

“From a sense of duty. He is a high- 
minded man, Marcella, no doubt trying 


two women’s tongues 


117 


to be true to his wife and to be wholly 
honorable in his relations to you, but 
everybody in the village knows his only 
real happiness is in your company.” 

“Aurelia Krupp, I am ashamed of you 
and I will not listen to you another in- 
stant. You may stay here and I will go, 
or I will stay here and you may go.” 

And when Aurelia only laughed and sat 
down, Marcella almost ran home, more 
unhappy than ever before in her life. 

VIII 

For she feared there was some truth in 
Aurelia’s assertion. It was revealed in 
a flash but it explained so much. Mr. 
Romney had never offered a sign of af- 
fection or a suggestion of any other rela- 
tion than that of pupil and teacher. He 
had never put his hand upon her shoulder 
or let it touch hers. In all their intercouse 


118 


two women’s tongues 


he had never shaken hands with her or 
uttered a tender word. In all the hours 
they had stayed after school there had not 
been a sentence or a gesture that would 
have been different had the whole school 
been in its seats. 

And yet. How had he been so quick 
to recognize her first compositions? Why 
did he so enjoy discussion with her? Why 
did so many of her ideas seem fresh to him 
and always interesting? Why was he so 
eager to begin their afternoon lessons, 
so reluctant to terminate them? 

Of course to her all this intercourse had 
been like a gift from heaven. To have 
this rich, noble mind pour out its stores 
of knowledge and reflection upon a poor 
little creature like her was a phenomenal 
blessing. But that while doing it for her 
sake and for the sake of the school he was 


TWO women’s tongues 


119 


getting gratification seemed beyond belief. 
That she — inferior, inconspicuous, unwel- 
come she — could give him something as 
well as receive so much was the height 
of happiness. 

But that he was in love with her, that 
was horrible to contemplate. He was 
above all else a good man, an upright man, 
an honorable man. It was one of his 
glories that he was loyal to a wife who, it 
must be confessed, was no match for him, 
and a helpless invalid. Marcella had so 
admired that he always referred to his 
wife with respect and affection, as though 
he were blessed in her. “In love with me?” 
Marcella reflected. “If I were not so pre- 
posterously unworthy it would still be 
impossible, for he is too loyal to be sub- 
ject to such a passion.” 

Then she remembered that Aurelia, the 


120 


two women’s tongues 


hateful thing, had admitted that Mr. 
Romney was too high-minded to be wil- 
lingly disloyal to his wife or dishonorable 
toward her. Aurelia’s idea was that Mr. 
Romney was in love but undemonstra- 
tively, perhaps unconsciously. If it were 
true, it would be a still greater proof of his 
noble nature. 

IX 

Seen from this angle it was credible and 
creditable. Marcella’s imagination was 
her great gift. If it had been fruitful when 
applied to high school studies, how it lux- 
uriated when it dealt with her affections. 
She had supposed her heart was a Sahara, 
and it drank up the joy of being loved as 
the sand swallows the fountain water and 
bears palms. It was much to be loved, 
but to be loved by the best and noblest 
man in all the world, this was a triumph. 


TWO WOMEN S TONGUES 


121 


It must be so. Sometimes he had said, 
“Why, I have sometimes thought just 
that myself; how strange that we should 
both have hit upon it.” Yes, it was 
strange; it was the miracle of life. And 
she was the one to share it with him. 

No wonder he had been so scrupulous 
not to manifest his affection. The stronger 
it was the more he felt the need of guarding 
the secret, which in a married man must 
be always a secret. She would guard it as 
scrupulously. 

X 

But a girl of eighteen is not always wary. 
Joy shone in Marcella's eyes, she was a 
new creature, she seemed to tread on air. 
Her recitations to Mr. Romney were an 
elysium, and when she was left with him 
after school she was in paradise. She 
tried not to seem conscious of him, es- 


122 


TWO WOMEN S TONGUES 


pecially not to look at him tenderly, but 
love flowed from her eyes, and everybody 
but Mr. Romney saw it. 

Nothing was farther from his thought 
than sentimentality in the schoolroom. To 
him his pupils were like sons and daughters, 
the relation was that of the family. Some- 
times there would be a trembling of Mar- 
cella’s voice, a gaze of her eye, that seemed 
unusual, but he attributed it to her en- 
thusiasm, for she was making wonderful 
progress. 

XI 

Mrs. Romney had been a teacher in one 
of his earlier schools. She needed a good 
deal of help, and she responded to his 
assistance by falling in love with him. 
When he discovered it he was perplexed. 
It was no part of his purpose to take a wife 
for years, but she was pretty, winning, and 


two women’s tongues 


123 


her affection grew welcome. He responded 
to it and he married her. Her possibilities 
were not great, her limitations began to 
appear final, in conversation she only 
echoed him and often failed to follow his 
thought, and when she succumbed to an 
illness that confined her for the rest of 
her life to her room, she was far from giving 
him what men hope for in marriage. 

But never once had he swerved from 
loyalty to her. On the night they became 
engaged they read over together on their 
knees the marriage service in the Episcopal 
prayer-book. All that service meant he 
assumed, and made it the first rule of life. 

Nor was he unrewarded. If she was 
not his mental companion, she was at least 
true and loving and trusting, and helpful 
so far as in her lay. He was accustomed 
to bring to her his practical problems of 


124 


two women’s tongues 


1 ife, and he had often been surprised at the 
help he got from the different angle of her 
viewpoint. Then her nature was restful. 
When he came home it was a relief from 
worry and care. She knew the food he 
wanted, the chairs that were comfortable 
for him, when he wanted to talk and when 
he wanted to think, and she had no wish 
in life beyond atoning by her assiduity 
for her lack of capacity. So they were 
happy together. 

XII 

One Monday afternoon when the teach- 
ers had gone to a conference in a neighbor- 
ing village, Mrs. Romney had a call from 
Mrs. Kennicott, wife of the Presbyterian 
clergyman, who resented Marcella’s chang- 
ing from their church to the Methodist 
so that she could see Mr. Romney during 
the service. 


two women’s tongues 


125 


“Perhaps that is not the reason,” her 
husband had protested. “A good many 
people go to the Methodist church to hear 
Mr. Moser. His sermons are timely, up 
to date, they say. I still give my people 
the old-fashioned doctrine that they seem 
to me to need for their soul’s welfare.” 

“ ’Tisn’t sermons,” Mrs. Kennicott re- 
plied indignantly. “Think of the impu- 
dence of her taking a side pew so that she 
can gaze at Mr. Romney’s face in the 
centre aisle.” 

So a sense of duty had brought her to 
Mrs. Romney, whose isolation was pre- 
venting her from knowing what everybody 
else in town was gossiping about. 

Mrs. Romney was not a sociable person. 
She read some, she looked out of the win- 
dow a good deal, she would lie for hours 
thinking, if light reminiscences deserve 


126 


TWO women’s tongues 


that name. So when Mrs. Kennicott was 
announced the call seemed formidable, 
but she welcomed the visitor as politely 
as possible. Perhaps her coldness stimu- 
lated the pastor’s wife, for she was soon 
saying, “I felt it my duty to tell you what 
all the village is repeating about your hus- 
band and Marcella Ticknor.” 

Ill as she was, Mrs. Romney rose from 
her reclining chair. “When I want any 
information about my husband I will ask 
him,” she said. “And if you will pardon 
my saying so I should be glad if you did 
not feel like staying longer.” 

Mrs. Kennicott was thoroughly angry. 
“There are none so blind as those who 
won’t see,” she retorted, as she bounced 
out of the room. 

XIII 

Mrs. Romney was flushed with her little 
triumph. “The idea of her being a mis- 


two women’s tongues 


127 


chief-maker between husband and wife,” 
she thought to herself. “Don’t I know 
all about Marcella Ticknor? I am as 
proud as he is of what he is doing for her. 
She isn’t the only one whom he has helped 
out of school hours, and made men and 
women their friends never dreamed they 
could become. He overworks; sometimes 
he comes home to supper so tired I almost 
wish he would give it up. But he is so 
proud of her and she is showing such prom- 
ise. How narrow and foul-minded people 
must be that suspect him of anything but 
generosity.” 

It happened that Marcella was to call 
that afternoon to see whether Mr. Romney 
would get back in time to give her a lesson 
here. He had telephoned his wife that he 
should stay over night to be toastmaster 
at a banquet, but Mrs. Romney asked 


128 


two women’s tongues 


the maid to invite Marcella when she 
called to come up stairs. 

XIV 

As Marcella came in, happy, looking 
Mrs. Romney full in the eye and evidently 
complimented to be asked in, Mrs. Romney 
wondered that anybody could suspect 
her innocence. She showed a fondness for 
Mrs. Romney that was manifestly without 
guile, and a sympathy that was not affect- 
ed. Yet Mrs. Romney recognized the 
sort of patronage that youth and health 
and a boundless future must inevitably 
feel for age and illness and a limited past. 
Marcella had so much; the elder woman 
so little. 

They chatted away, Mrs. Romney ob- 
serving the girl with a new interest, and 
impressed by her quick perception, her 
keen grasp, her wide background. Just 


two women’s tongues 


129 


then the class was reading Andrea del 
Sarto. “You know it, of course?” Mar- 
cella asked. 

“I think not,” replied Mrs. Romney. 

“I thought your husband must have 
read it to you, he is so fond of it,” Mar- 
cella went on. “He showed us the picture 
from which Browning wrote the poem, 
with Andrea’s wistful countenance and 
Lucre/.ia’s cold face. Think of a painter 
who could correct Raphael’s lines and yet : 
“ ‘Ay, but the soul! he’s Raphael! rub it 
out! 

Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth, 
(What he? why, who but Michael Angelo? 
Do you forget already words like these?)’ 

“Think what it was to chain him to a 
creature like that who could not follow 
his thought; who when he said he should 
work better had to explain, 


130 


TWO women’s tongues 


“ ‘I mean that I should work more, give 
you more.’ 

“And the most pathetic line is at the end, 
14 ‘as I choose.’ 

“Glory lost, honor lost, happiness lost, 
and yet he was so tied to her that he would 
not have it otherwise.” 

As she prattled on in her enthusiasm 
Marcella did not surmise how her words 
struck home. Mrs. Romney remembered 
now that years ago, when Mr. Romney 
began to study Browning he had tried to 
interest her in this poem, but could not 
make it seem much to her. How different 
it must be to have this child respond so 
to its meaning. 

When she led Marcella to talk of Mr. 
Romney she no longer wondered that 
people suspected a love affair. Marcella’s 
eyes shone, her voice trembled, she wor- 


TWO women’s tongues 


131 


shipped him. Her ingenuousness showed 
her innocent, but for all time he would 
be to her the one man. When Marcella 
went, Mrs. Romney kissed her with sin- 
cere affection. She was glad to find one 
person who knew her husband for the 
noble man he was. 

XV 

In his absence it was a long night for his 
wife. She knew how true he was to her, 
but for the first time she began to feel at 
what sacrifice. Marcella was not pretty, 
but she was round, with plump cheeks, 
clear complexion, good color, thirty-two 
sound teeth, sweet breath, in every way a 
fragrant atmosphere. When she thought 
of herself, a wreck in appearance, an inside 
that a drug-store was still experimenting 
upon, helpless, stupid, she felt how much 
more Marcella could give him. These 


132 


two women’s tongues 


reflections came at a time of physical de- 
pression. With no husband at hand to 
cheer her, a new and horrible purpose be- 
gan to gather. 

Among her several weaknesses was one 
of the heart, and for this she had a special 
medicine. ‘ ‘ If you feel it coming on again, ’ ’ 
the doctor had said, “take two drops of 
this: in extremity you might take four.” 

“Suppose I should take eight?” she 
asked laughing. 

“Order your coffin first,” he had replied 
in the same tone; “you won’t be able to 
afterward.” 

She held this bottle in her hand and look- 
ed at it. Eight drops. It would be so 
easy. Her life was known to hang by 
such slender threads, the snapping of any 
one of which would end it, that nobody 
would ever suspect. 


TWO women’s tongues 


133 


Then her husband could have that fresh 
young form to caress. She remembered 
how susceptible he was to proximity. 
Before their engagement if he seemed cold 
she had only to touch her shoulder to his 
and he was hers again. There was never 
anything the world might not see, yet 
instinctively she knew that the moment she 
edged up to him he was subject to her. 
All that had gone long, long age, but why 
should not her husband experience it again? 
Why should he not have children, an en- 
tire home instead of this hospital chamber 
of hers? 

Her husband got back so late that he 
went to the school without coming into 
the house, and on account of an unusual 
case of discipline he stayed there at noon, 
sharing the lunch of a boy from the coun- 
try. He meant to make it up to his wife 


134 


TWO WOMEN S TONGUES 


that evening, but there was so much ac- 
cumulated work to do. 

To her it was the wrong time for him to 
be away. Her melancholy became abnor- 
mal, her mind became unsettled, visions 
of her husband happy with Marcella over- 
powered her and made her think her duty 
was renunciation. The thought became 
an obsession. She took the bottle and 
counted out the drops. One, two, three 
four; she paused, and then went on, five, 
six, seven, eight. 'There they were in the 
spoon, all the eight, freedom for her hus- 
band, happiness for Marcella. With a 
sort of sublimation of thought she drank 
them down. 

XVI 

The president of the board had been 
disturbed by the scandalous rumors that 
by this time had got into common con- 


two women’s tongues 


13 


versation. This Tuesday afternoon he 
called in the janitor. “Rumsey,” he said, 
“they are circulating stories about Romney 
and Marcella Ticknor.” 

“There ain’t nothin’ in it,’’ replied the 
janitor warmly. “There ain’t no better 
man here than Mr. Romney, nor no better 
girl than Marcella.” 

“But they are together a good deal when 
you don’t see them. They are together 
now. How do you know what they do 
when you are not there?” 

“They ain’t the kind that needs no 
spyin’ on. I’ll take my oath they are 
tendin’ right to the lesson now as if all the 
school was there.” 

“I tell you what I wish you would do, 
Rumsey. Go back to the schoolhouse and 
take a look. They know you have gone 
away and don’t think you will be coming 
back.” 


136 


TWO WOMEN S TONGUES 


“I don’t like to seem to be pussy-foot- 
ing,” said the janitor, “but I’ll do it to 
oblige you.” 

XVII 

This Tuesday afternoon Mr. Romney 
was so tired as to be depressed. He had 
read a paper at the conference which had 
been warmly discussed and had exhausted 
his energies at a time when the overwork 
of after-school recitations had worn him 
down. Two of his teachers had behaved 
badly there: he was ashamed of them as 
representing his school. The pupils after 
an unusual holiday did not get down to 
work easily, and there had been consider- 
able friction. Altogether it was hard at 
four o’clock to take on another burden and 
try to make clear to Marcella a geometric 
principle that her mind, bright in so many 
ways, seemed to find it impossible to grasp. 


two women’s tongues 


137 


As it happened his previous teaching had 
been more effective than he had hoped, 
and when he toned himself up to his best 
effort she caught the idea and showed that 
she understood it clearly. In her exulta- 
tion her gratitude became more effusive 
than she intended it should ever become, 
and when she saw how fatigued he was and 
realized that it was for her, she suddenly 
threw her arms about his neck and before 
he could release himself had kissed him 
half a dozen times. It was not passion; 
she knew nothing about passion. It was 
the mother feeling instinctive in women 
for the one she loved and was sorry for. 

It was just then that the janitor slipped 
up to the door. He saw it with consterna- 
tion and grief, but he returned to the pres- 
ident of the board and reported it. He was 
sent back to fetch the principal and the 


138 


two women’s tongues 


girl to the president’s office, where the 
members of the board had been summoned 
by telephone. The janitor told his story. 
“Is it true?” the president asked. They 
could not deny it, they were not permitted 
to explain. Mr. Romney was dismissed, 
and Marcella was expelled. 

XVIII 

The next morning Miss Littrow and 
Miss Applegate read in the morning news- 
paper these headlines: 

Scandal at Atherton 
Principal dismissed, pupil expelled 
Principal’s wife commits suicide 

“Isn’t it perfectly awful?” shuddered 
Miss Applegate. 

Miss Littrow compressed her thin lips. 
“Yes,” she said “but we shall get our con- 
tracts for next year.” 

And they did. 


In the laboratory 





IN THE LABORATORY 


‘‘Before I give up my key to the labora- 
tory, ’’ said Alvin Wolfe to Mr. Coe, “I 
wish you would let me show you a point 
about the new physics room.” 

Mr. Coe thought it rather presuming, 
but accompanied his discharged assistant 
to the third floor, where the new laboratory 
was finished but not yet furnished. Alvin 
Wolfe unlocked the door, stood aside for 
the principal to enter, and then locked the 
door. 

‘‘What I wanted to show you,” he said, 
‘‘is what an admirable place this is for me 
to give you the damnedest licking a man 
ever had. You’ve got me dismissed and 
my certificate annulled. You’ve taken 
( 141 ) 


142 


IN THE LABORATORY 


away my job and my occupation. You’ve 
got it published in all the county news- 
papers and it will go all over the country 
in the associated press dispatches. I’ve 
got to sneak off anyway and hide where 
they don’t know me, and I may as well 
have assault and battery on you to hide 
away from too.” 

The room was lit from the top and the 
bare walls were solid. It was after school 
and the janitor had gone home. No sound 
in the room could penetrate down stairs. 
All this Mr. Coe took in as the young man 
went on: “I don’t intend to kill you. 
Unless I lose my temper I shall leave you a 
chance to get your breath again, but I’m 
going to pound every inch of your muscle 
into a black and blue pulp. I don’t even 
mean to break any bones, though I shall 
wrench them some. Yes, I believe I will 


IN THE LABORATORY 


143 


smash in your nose: I’ll make that my last 
blow, to push in your nose even with your 
face. A broken-nosed man always looks 
especially forlorn, and 111 leave you that 
to remember me by. How do you like 
the programme?” 

“It looks feasible,” replied Mr. Coe. 
“You have the strength and the opportu- 
nity, and apparently the disposition.” 

“You may bet I’ve got the disposition,” 
said Alvin, rubbing his right closed fist 
against his left open hand. “There is no 
satisfaction of a grudge quite equal to 
landing your fist square against the other 
fellow’s eye. I’m going to have a circus 
with you.” 

“Of course you will be ashamed of it 
afterward.” 

“Ashamed of getting even with you after 
you have ruined my career? Well, I guess 


144 


IN THE LABORATORY 


not. It’s the one satisfaction I shall carry 
away with me. 

“All the year you’ve been so superior. 
You know so much and you’ve travelled 
so much, so many big people bow to you 
and your motives are so high and your 
character is so unquestioned that you have 
made me tired. But there’s one thing 
where I come first, and just now it’s the 
thing. I am young, twenty-eight years 
old, in the fullness of strength and vigor 
and enjoyment. You are sixty years old, 
and a pretty poor specimen. Thomas 
Arnold said he would quit teaching when 
he couldn’t run up stairs two steps at a 
time. You can’t do it. You lift your 
foot at eveny step, and if there are two 
flights you are relieved when you get to 
the top. 

“You haven’t any strength in your 


IN THE LABORATORY 


145 


fingers. More than once I have seen you 
take a pair of pincers to tighten or loosen 
a simple nut. I can crack a filbert between 
my thumb and finger. See?” The young 
man took one from his pocket as he spoke, 
and cracked it, and put the meat in his 
mouth. He was always munching. 

‘ 4 Your wife thinks you are a hero and 
a giant. More than once I have longed 
to twist your ear between my thumb and 
finger and make you kneel down, to show 
what a pigmy you really are. What will 
your children think when you are brought 
home in a rubber blanket, like a hospital 
patient after an operation? 

“How inferior you must seem at this 
moment with your thinning hair, your 
forceless muscles, your short breath. 

44 You haven’t any appetite any more. 
You eat three times a day, and in a way 


146 


IN THE LABORATORY 


you enjoy your food, but only as a form. 
If you like something and wish you had 
been helped a little more fully you don’t 
ask for another plate : it is too much trouble. 
If a dish pleases my palate I call for another 
and another, even if I know I am eating 
too much and shall suffer for it : you forgot 
years ago how to conceive of such a thing. 
With you eating is no longer an appetite, 
it is only a habit. You’re in the oat-meal 
stage. Dr. Johnson defined oats as some- 
thing they gave horses to eat in England 
and ate themselves in Scotland. It’s 
what you like to eat best. You don’t 
eat a pound of meat in a month. See that 
muscle? It comes from a pound of sirloin 
steak every day I live. You don’t live: 
you just vegetate. 

“The same with drink. Do you remem- 
ber that liquor I brought home from Flo- 


IN THE LABORATORY 


147 


rence, that had in every sip the fragrance 
of a flower-garden? I gave you a glass 
of it, and you remarked indifferently that 
it was delicious, and made your little joke 
that in these days when the regents are 
illustrating everything to the children they 
ought to serve this liquor to them so that 
they might realize what nectar was. But 
you did not ask for another glass or where 
it could be bought or even inquire the name 
of it. You have no appetite even for 
wines, only the habit of drinking some- 
thing, no matter what. 

“Then you’re so damned respectable. 
I don’t know whether I shall want to be 
respectable when I grow old. It’s such a 
fetter. When anything happens I can 
predict just what you'll do. You'll do the 
respectable thing, the conventional thing, 
the thing that the clergyman and the 


148 


IN THE LABORATORY 


banker and the doctor’s wife will do, the 
thing that’s down in books of etiquette and 
ethics. You have about as much initia- 
tive as a boy’s toy locomotive on a circu- 
lar track. You can’t tell what I’ll do. 
It’s not respectable for me to lock you in 
up here and pound you to a jelly, but I 
am not limited by respectability. It will 
take me a good while to become respectable 
now, after you’ve caught me cheating in 
regents examination and lying about it. 
I haven’t made up my mind yet whether 
it will be worth while even for my later 
days. 

“And you’ve got property. You can 
lose your place tomorrow and live as you 
are living now the rest of your life on what 
you have saved. How did you save it? 
By denying yourself everything that ap- 
peals to youth and health .like mine. My 


IN THE LABORATORY 


149 


will would read like the Frenchman's, 
‘I have nothing, I owe much, the rest I 
leave to the poor,’ but I've got something 
out of my money : there's nobody can show 
me much about what fifty dollars will do 
in a New York evening. I don't know 
whether I shall try to save up as I get 
older: more likely I’ll marry a rich wife. 
But I hate your smug respectability and 
your bank account and I’m going to show 
you what they are worth in an 'empty 
room against the strongest fullback Ratke 
college ever had. How do you like the 
prospect?" 

"What you say is interesting and in a 
way assuring. I suppose a man never 
takes away another's occupation without 
fearing he is too severe. I shall never have 
any compunctions about getting your certi- 
ficate annulled." 


150 


IN THE LABORATORY 


“Do you remember the first lie you 
caught me in?” 

“I don’t know which was first: they 
began early.” 

“It was one morning when you reproach- 
ed me for being late and I told you, as I 
had told you before, that I was in the 
laboratory. You took me upstairs and 
showed me a slip of white courtplaster at 
the bottom of the laboratory door that 
you had put there after school the night 
before as a seal, and that was unbroken. 
It was clever, but I hated you for it, not 
only for detecting me but for showing a 
previous suspicion.” 

“The suspicion was evidently justified.” 

“But I hated you for it, and I hate you 
for it now, and I’m going to get even with 
you now. An’ the janitor’ll come and 
hear you moanin’ an’ he’ll say, Wot’s 


IN THE LABORATORY 


151 


that, an’ you’ll say, It’s just Mr. Wolfe 
sayin’ good bye to me an’ he said it power- 
ful hard.” 

It seemed to Mr. Coe an atavic reversion, 
as though the spirit of a British longshore- 
man were surviving in Alvin Wolfe: it was 
a wonder he did not miss his h’s. 

‘‘See here, Mr. Wolfe,” he said, “you’ve 
been telling what you are going to do till 
it has become tiresome. Has it occurred 
to you to consider what I am going to do 
all this while?” 

“Why, what can you do?” 

“You don’t for a minute suppose I am 
going to stand still and let you pound me 
like a beefsteak on a butcher’s block, do 
you? Very likely you may come out ahead 
but your tenor solo will have a lively ob- 
ligato accompaniment . ’ ’ 

The young man’s face fell. Some way 


152 


IN THE LABORATORY 


he had not thought of resistance, this 
little hundred-and-fifty-pound man against 
his great brawn. He remembered that 
Mr. Coe had a reputation for developing 
unexpected resources: perhaps he knew 
jiu-jitsu or the Norwegian twist. 

Mr. Coe observed him contemptuously 
and went on: “Don’t you think you have 
bluffed long enough about what you are 
going to do, Mr. Wolfe? You are not 
going to do anything at all. That was 
evident the minute I told you I was going 
to hit back. I can’t hurt you as much as 
you could hurt me, but I can hurt you some, 
and you are too much of a coward to face 
that some. If you could have me tied up 
to a post with my hands fastened behind 
me you would no doubt like to hit me, 
but with my fists free you don’t dare face 
them. You are the yellowest scoundrel 


IN THE LABORATORY 


153 


I ever ran across. Let us end this farce, 
or I shall be forced to do the attacking 
myself. Unlock the door.” 

Stung by Mr. Coe’s contempt Alvin 
Wolfe half raised his fist, but he was afraid 
of being hurt even a little. He knew it, 
Mr. Coe knew it, he knew Mr. Coe knew 
it, and of a sudden he turned, unlocked the 
door, ran down stairs, and disappeared. 
Nor was he ever again heard of there. 





Behind schedule 




BEHIND SCHEDULE 


I 

When he had recovered consciousness 
and remembrance he asked, “I suppose 
there is no hope?” 

“No,” replied the doctor; “it is a matter 
of hours, perhaps of minutes.” 

“I haven’t any pain.” 

“Because you are paralyzed.” 

“But my mind seems clear.” 

“It moves independently of your mus- 
cles. You took a great risk and you lost 
out, but it was a noble deed.” 

“O no, it was inevitable. I can imagine 
a man questioning whether he has a right 
to risk his life, but with forty of his own 
children in danger he cannot hesitate. 

Were any of them hurt?” 

( 157 ) 


158 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


“Four or five were knocked down and 
bruised as the back wheels skidded around, 
but none seriously.’ 

“I ought to have taken more pains to 
catch the inside rein. I thought the out- 
side one would carry me along with the 
horses, but it gave way through the mar- 
tingale and let me under the wheel. A 
traffic policeman would have known bet- 
ter.” 

“How like a teacher. You are already 
generalizing and creating a system for 
what happens once in a generation. It 
was well enough done to make you the 
greatest hero this town has ever known.” 

“Nobody could have helped trying, and 
a quicker-thoughted man would have 
caught the inside rein.” 

II 

“Yes, you may come in. He has not 
long to live, but his mind is clear. Mr. 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


159 


Percy, here is the president of the board/’ 

“How do you do, Mr. Balsley? You 
find me down and out.” 

“But gloriously. No lesson you ever 
taught in school was so valuable as that 
you gave us all this morning. I am come 
partly as a lawyer to see if there is any 
help I can give you as to the disposal of 
your estate.” 

“Thank you, there is not much of it. 
My bills are all paid except those of the 
month, which my salary will take care of, 
as well as of my funeral expenses. These 
I want to be light and simple. I have some 
eight hundred dollars in the bank. I have 
no near or needy relatives, yet they would 
I suppose scramble over it, and I would 
rather leave nothing. Suppose I give 
you two checks, one for two hundred dol- 


160 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


lars for a lot in the cemetery, and one for 
six hundred for a stone.” 

“What sort of a monument do you 
want?” 

“The plainest possible: say a cube of 
Scotch granite as big as six hundred will 
buy, with just Floyd Percy, 1888-1916, 
on top.” 

“Why not some reference as to how you 
died?” 

“Not a word. This is one reason why I 
want to provide the inscription myself.” 

“At least let it be Floyd Percy, teacher .” 

“ Procul , profani. That was Louis 
Agassiz’s inscription for himself. Far be 
it from me to appropriate his glorious 
title.” _ 

“It shall be as you wish. But how can 
you sign the checks?” 

“Put the pen in my mouth and let me 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


161 


guide it for a cross. There: that will be 
legal.” 

“I will execute your wishes at once. 
There is nothing else I can do? Then 
good bye, and be assured this school and 
this village will never cease to revere your 
memory.” 

“Sad death, Dr. Kirke, but glorious. 
It will make this village famous. It is 
all well enough for him to order his simple 
cube of granite; I will see that it is started 
at once. But it will be put at the foot of 
his grave. We are going to raise by sub- 
scription a monument that will cost five 
« 

thousand dollars if not ten. I have already 
spoken to some of the parents of the child- 
ren who were in danger. It will make our 
school famous all over the country.” 


162 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


III 

“Yes, you may enter. Mr. Percy, this 
is Dr. Doxsee.” 

“How good of you to come, Doctor.” 

“In the midst of life we are in death. 
Who would have thought at breakfast 
that you would be the first in this commu- 
nity to go?” 

“It doesn't matter much when, if only 
we are ready. My life has not been all 
I could have wished, but fortunately I 
have never relied on my good deeds, and 
I die in full faith.” 

“Praise God, from whom all blessings 
flow. Dr. Kirke says you cannot outlive 
the day, and I suppose naturally the funeral 
would be on Saturday, but I am hoping 
you will let it be postponed till Sunday, 
that it may be our morning service. All 
the village will want to be there.” 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


163 


“I would like not to have too much 
made of the accident. Anybody would 
have tried to save' those children, and a 
quicker man would have caught the inside 
rein and saved his own life." 

“Leave that to me, Mr. Percy. I shall 
not say more than is deserved, and your 
modesty is not the least of your merits. 
And your faith. It is an example to all, 
even to me.” 

IV 

On the way home Dr. Doxsee stopped 
at the undertaker’s. “The funeral is to 
be on Sunday morning, in my church,” 
he said. 

“When did he pass away?” 

“The end had not come when I was 
there, but Dr. Kirke said it was a matter 
of an hour or two. Now I want these to 
be the most elaborate obsequies that have 


164 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


ever been held in the village. You re- 
member how they filled the Episcopal 
church with flowers for old Hey wood, a 
man whome everybody detested. Now 
Floyd Percy died a hero’s death, and we 
must way outdo the Hey wood funeral.” 

“Who will be responsible for the ex- 
penses?” 

“The board of education, of course. 
Mr. Balsley will be around to make ar- 
rangements, but I wanted to see you first 
so that your suggestions may lead him up 
to a fitting memorial service. The casket 
must be under the pulpit, and I want the 
east end of the church so banked with 
flowers that only I and the casket will be 
seen.” 

“What flowers shall we use?” 

“Most that are sent in from the parents 
will probably be roses. Multiply them. 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


165 


but telegraph to Ipswich and see how 
many violets you can get. If we can 
have a band of violets clear across the east 
end of the church it will make the Hey- 
wood decorations seem cheap. But what- 
ever you get, have profusion. Let it be 
remembered for years as the most dis- 
tinguished church function ever held in 
the village.” 

V 

“This is the reporter for the Argus, Mr. 
Percy. Do you want to see him?” 

“O yes, let him come in. How do you 
do, Mr. Albro?” 

“Thank you for seeing me at such a 
time. This village is the most glorious 
spot in North America today on account 
of your heroism.” 

“Put on the soft pedal, Mr. Albro. A 
teacher sees a runaway truck making for 


166 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


a group of his own school children: what 
is he to do?” 

“Look out for himself first, usually. 
Glory to you, the Albino schoolmaster 
sets an example for the whole world. 
Would you like to hear what I have writ- 
ten?” 

“Not if it is on that key. Any man 
would have done the same thing, and 
most of them would have been less clumsy. 
If you must tell of it at all just give facts, 
not heroics.” 

“That is the most heroic feature of it 
that it seems to you so commonplace. 
What a world this would be if such actions 
were commonplace. Can you give me a 
photograph?” 

“No, I haven’t a photograph. The 
glimpses I have got of my face when I 
was brushing my hair have not encouraged 
me to perpetuate my features.” 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


167 


“Can you give me the address of a pho- 
tographer who has your negative?” 

“I haven’t had a picture taken since 
graduation. I had a smooth face then 
and I haven’t shaved since, so there would 
be little resemblance.” 


“How long is he likely to last, Dr. 
Kirke?” 

’’Not long; possibly into the evening.” 

“Shall I be safe in getting it into the 
morning Argus?” 

“O yes, perfectly.” 

VI 

“I hardly think I ought to let him see 
you. There have been several callers 
and he is near the end.” 

“Great heavens, doctor, do you know 
who I am? I am manager for the Up-to- 
date movies. By Sunday this heroic act 


168 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


will be seen actually in motion in every 
city east of Chicago. It will make him 
and your village famous.” 


“O let him come in, Dr. Kirke. I am 
not so very tired, and this seems funny 
enough to be interesting.” 

“Funny, Mr. Percy? There are men 
all over this country that would give up 
their lives gladly just for the publicity you 
are going to have, to say nothing of the 
heroism.” 

“But how are you going to reproduce it?” 

“Easiest thing in the world. We have 
engaged the same horses, a truck that looks 
just the same, and the very same children. 
A man of your height and build will do 
just what you did, and I am taking note 
of your beard so that he can have on one 
just like it.” 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


169 


“But suppose he should miss the rein, 
then the children will be hurt.” 

“He won’t miss it. He does this sort of 
thing every day, all over the country.’’ 

“Tell him to be sure to catch the inside 
rein: not blunder as I did.” 

“Forget it! If he caught the inside 
rein he would be carried along all right, 
but the horses wouldn’t be swung around 
short enough to escape the children. You 
did just the right thing.” 

“Really? Well, thank you for that; 
I have been blaming myself. But suppose 
by some chance he should miss the rein, 
what will happen to the children; and 
what will happen to him if he falls under 
the wheel as I did?” 

“He won’t miss it, but if he did there 
would be no danger. The truck looks 
like the other, but it is made of papier 


170 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


mache and doesn’t weigh a hundred pounds. 
The wheel will roll over him without hurt- 
ing him, and if the truck hit the children 
it wouldn’t bruise them. No, it is an 
exact reproduction, entirely without dan- 
ger.” 

“This is preposterous enough to be amus- 
ing, Go ahead, with my blessing.” 

“I am wondering if you will let me have 
one of your old suits of clothes. You 
won’t want it any more, and it will give 
reality to the motion-pictures.” 

“Certainly. Help yourself to any in 
the closet, there; the brown one I wore 
most. I only wish I could see the show 
myself. This is certainly a wonderful 
age.” 

VII 

“Miss Bonta, I hardly thought we should 
need a nurse, but he lingers surprisingly, 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


171 


so I will leave him in your hands. When 
the crisis comes you may telephone me. 
He is sleeping now. He cannot live long, 
and the only question is whether he shall 
die comfortably or in pain, so I have given 
him a heavy opiate.” 

VIII 

“This is the Argus, Dr. Kirke. Any 
change in Mr. Percy?” 

“The nurse hasn’t telephoned me. I 
will call her up. — No, she says he is sleep- 
ing quietly. He must have an amazing 
vitality. Better let the obituary go over 
till Friday.” 

IX 

“This is Dr. Doxsee, Dr. Kirke. At 
what hour did the end come?” 

“Why, the fact is, it hasn’t come yet. 
He was living this morning and his land- 
lady got nervous and worried with all the 


172 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


calls and excitement and insisted on his 
being taken to the hospital. You know 
the new superintendent there, a Johns 
Hopkins man who thinks nobody else 
knows anything. He has taken the case 
right out of my hands, and says there is 
no telling how long Mr. Percy may live.” 

“This is most annoying. The whole 
point of my sermon is the suddenness of 
his death. I am not sure we can have the 
the funeral Sunday if he lingers clear 
through the day. We should have had the 
church full, and I will guarantee I shouldn’t 
have left a dry eye. I never had such a 
chance before. And now it will probably 
have to go over to next week, and my 
discourse will all have to be rewritten.” 

X 

“Mr. Balsley, this is Dr. Patmore, at 
the hospital. Mr. Percy is still living 


BEHIND- SCHEDULE 


173 


and decidedly gaining. I want to make 
inquiry as to who is responsible for his 
expenses.” 

“How much a week?” 

“Sixty-five dollars, including day and 
night nurses.” 

“He has no means of his own. He 
bought a lot in the cemetery, and it is a 
rule of the trustees never to release a pur- 
chase. He ordered a block of granite 
and the man set to work on it at once. 
The name and the date are both cut, so 
there is no getting that back; as things are 
going the date may be wrong. The board 
is of course willing to do what is reasonable. 
His salary was forty-five dollars a week. 
We will continue that for the present, 
and let the teachers call on him now and 
then for advice. Can’t you get the ex- 
pense down to that?” 


174 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


XI 

“Miss My tens, how long are we going 
to keep on going to the hospital to con- 
sult Mr. Percy?” 

“I suppose we can't help it; the board 
orders us to.” 

“It was all well enough for two or three 
times, but he doesn’t get any worse, and 
it begins to look like a permanent thing.” 

“I must confess I don’t like it, talking 
with a man who is only a face, like an ad- 
vertisement for long neckties.” 

“Let’s protest to the board that there 
is no use in it — Mr. Percy can’t know 
what is really going on: and it is uncanny 
— it makes you shudder to go to the hos- 
pital day after day.” 

“Is it your turn today? Give Mr. Percy 
a little idea of how we feel about it, Miss 
Mytens, and I will start a petition for the 
board meeting tonight.” 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


175 


XII 

“I am so glad to see you, Miss Mytens. 
Your face brings every child in your room 
fresh to my mind. Reba Jermoe getting 
over her lameness?” 

“Yes, she walks pretty well now.” 

“How about Beriah Sewall’s pronun- 
ciation? It is so like mine when I was a 
boy, and I suppose his bringing up in 
central Massachusetts was about the same. 
I never used to sound my r’s, and pro- 
nounced father and farther alike, just as 
he does. And coat, stone, it takes me 
back to Groton to hear the short sounds 
he gives the o’s. And srimp for shrimp — 
I never used to get in that h. But he is all 
right on the a’s: these New York children 
practise in vain to get fast and ask and 
answer like their New England neighbors. 


176 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


Do you think Beriah is getting to pro- 
nounce like the. other boys?” 

“I guess so; I haven’t noticed much. 
You lie here and think about the school 
and things seem important to you that 
we don’t bother with.” 

“I hope you don’t find it disagreeable 
to come, Miss Mytens.” 

“To tell the truth, I do, Mr. Percy; 
we all do. Of course the board doesn’t 
think it can go on paying your salary with- 
out any return, and so it orders us to come 
here once a week, but it is a good deal to 
ask of us.” 

“I am sorry, Miss Mytens; I had not 
thought of it that way. It has been such 
a joy to me to keep track of the school and 
of all those dear pupils that I had not 
realized what an imposition it was upon 
you. Don’t let me keep you any longer 
this afternoon.” 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


177 


XIII 

At the board meeting that night Mr. 
Maclise said: 

“Mr. President, I have here a petition 
from the teachers of the school asking 
that the regulation that each teacher 
report every week to Mr. Percy be re- 
scinded, and I declare I think there is 
justice in it. He can’t help them much, 
and if it is only an excuse for paying him 
his salary let us drop it.” 

Mr. Aram nodded his dead emphatically. 

“I must say, Mr. President,” he said, 
“I don’t see why this paying his salary 
should go on. When we first voted it we 
supposed he was on the point of death. 
He has lived now nine weeks and Dr. Pat- 
more says he may live indefinitely. Sup- 
pose we set a limit, and hire a new prin- 
cipal.” 


178 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


“We must remember, gentlemen, that 
he owes his condition to the risking his 
life to save our children.” 

“Yes, and we are willing to recognize 
it in a reasonable way. But we must 
consider the school first. It needs a prin- 
cipal there in the building; it is showing 
the results of lack of one. We must hire 
another man, and the district will never 
stand for our paying two salaries.” 

“Isn’t it a matter for the overseer of the 
poor?” asked Mr. Rennie. 

“I talked with him and first he claimed 
that Mr. Percy wasn’t a resident of the 
county. I assured him that he was; that 
he had lived here ever since he graduated 
from college and had never voted anywhere 
else. Then he said if the county had to 
support him it certainly wouldn’t pay 
any forty-five dollars a week. It might' 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


179 


take him in at the county hospital. But 
of course he could have only the ordinary 
treatment.” 

“Mr. President, you were proposing a 
monument to cost five or ten thousand 
dollars, by subscription. Why will not 
those same people subscribe the same 
amounts to make him comfortable the 
rest of his days?” 

“I tried that, gentlemen, but they said 
it was a different thing. Put up a monu- 
ment and pay for it and it is there for all 
time, a credit to the village. Subscribe 
for a hospital bill and it will be a constant 
drain, money dumped into a quicksand, 
as long as he lives: and he may outlive 
every man of us.” 

XIV 

The telephone bell rang. Mr. Balsley 
went into the other room and took up the 


receiver. 


180 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


“This is Dr. Patmore. I am grieved to 
say that Mr. Percy has just breathed his 
last." 

“Wasn’t it sudden?” 

“Astonishingly so. He was like a Ford 
runabout that had collided with a touring- 
car, badly disabled but the engine still 
vigorous. Some way late this afternoon 
all the courage oozed out of him. Stim- 
ulants had no effect, and his heart stopped 
abruptly. I am sorry. His was a most 
interesting case, and his vitality had been 
phenomenal. But all at once it went, 
and the end came.” 

XV 

Mr. Balsley came back into the meeting. 

“Gentlemen,” he said, “we need discuss 
the matter no longer. Mr. Percy died at 
seven fifteen.” 

“Mr. President,” said Mr. Aram, “I 


BEHIND SCHEDULE 


181 


move that a committee be appointed, of 
whom the president shall be chairman, 
to express our grief at the untimely death 
of one who was a faithful and successful 
principal, and whose demise resulted from 
an act so heroic that it will always be a 
grateful memory of this village.’' 

The resolution was handsomely engrossed 
and hangs in the room of the board of 
education. 






































































. 











The blank letter 









THE BLANK LETTER 


I 

“Leon,” said Alwyn Graham, “it has 
happened that during the year I have 
dined with a dozen of the best fellows of 
the class, and of them all I think you are 
the most to be envied.” 

“I am certainly happy. I have a great 
deal more than I deserve.” 

“I don’t think any man in the class would 
say that, Leon. You were a staunch 
standby always.” 

“What a lot of fine fellows we had.” 

“Yes, I think ours was an exceptional 
class. There weren’t as large a propor- 
tion of superior men in any other of the 
seven while we were there. But we all 
( 185 ) 


186 


THE BLANK LETTER 


looked up to you. Most of us were reason- 
ably square, and looked other people in 
the eye when we talked to them, but some 
way when a man talked to you he felt he 
was seeing right down into your soul. 
Every man in the class swore by you.” 

“You were all too good to me.” 

“We couldn’t be. And it is a real delight 
to see you so comfortable and prosperous. 
This was your wife’s home, of course?” 

“Yes, her great-grandfather built it. 
How impossible it seems over here. But 
aside from new heating and plumbing and 
an occasional porch we haven’t needed to 
alter it. They hewed their timber in those 
days and it lasts.” 

“What was her great-grandfather?” 

“He was a lawyer and ended by being 
county judge. Her grandfather and 
father were pl^sicians. Her father rather 


THE BLANK LETTER 


187 


wanted me to be, but I had always looked 
forward to teaching, so I took the school 
here.” 

“And have staid here ever since, and 
never regretted it, I suppose.” 

“Not for a minute. Every year I enjoy 
my work more. I am beginning to have 
grandchildren of some of my first pupils, 
and it is such a delight to watch hereditary 
characteristics. What is more, I really 
feel that every generation is a little better 
than the last.” 

“What a beautiful woman your wife is.” 

“I am glad you could see her at home. 
I haven’t brought her to the class reunions 
because we have always had children too 
young to travel and we couldn’t go without 
them. But isn’t she a queen here? We 
really grew up together, for I have lived 
in this house ever since I was sixteen, and 


188 


THE BLANK LETTER 


every year she has shown new grace and 
loveliness. Think what a joy it is to have 
my children grow up under such a mother.” 

“You must be proud of them.” 

“I am, but that is not the first word. 
I am fond of them beyond expression. 
Talk about children being grateful for 
their parents’ care! We are grateful every 
day for the chance to enjoy bringing them 
up.” 

“Work of the kind you like and plenty 
of it, abundant means, a comfortable home, 
and a happy family — you’ve got it about 
all in, Leon.” 

“I have indeed, Ahvyn. Come again the 
first chance you have. I want you to 
get periodical views of my youngsters, 
so that you may see them in the making. 
Good-bye till next time.” 


THE BLANK LETTER 


189 


II 

When his guest had gone Leon picked 
up the evening mail, which had lain un- 
disturbed. There were a bill for books, a 
request to speak at a teachers conference, 
a request from a graduate for her mark in 
a geometry examination. He laid these 
aside and picked up the last. As he open- 
ed it he found inside another sealed en- 
velope addressed 

Blutch Cuddebac 

Titnoleon, N. Y. 

His face grew ashen as though he was 
gazing upon a spectre of the buried past. 
He sank back in a chair, holding the envel- 
ope in his hand and staring at it. 

For Blutch Cuddebac was his real name. 
He had never known parents. His earliest 
recollections were of an orphan asylum 
in a small California city. He had run 


190 


THE BLANK LETTER 


away from it and gone to a larger city, 
where he lived from hand to mouth and 
fell in with a tough gang. He had always 
pilfered as a means of getting a living, 
and with these new comrades he got into 
bolder operations. Finally they under- 
took to rob a post-office in a private house 
in a hamlet near by, were caught and con- 
victed and sentenced. While the five 
lay in jail awaiting transportation to state 
prison, they planned an escape, overpower- 
ed the keeper, and had almost got away 
when a guard unexpectedly appeared and 
pointed a gun at them. The eldest of the 
five, a seasoned criminal, made a dash for 
the guard, got the pistol away from him 
and killed him. The shots brought assis- 
tance -and the five prisoners scattered. 
Two were captured and soon after hanged, 
but Blutch somehow got to San Francisco, 


THE BLANK LETTER 


191 


and on the outskirts ran into the mate of 
a ship about to sail around the Horn but a 
man short. It was Blutch’s chance, and 
he was on the vessel before anybody had 
observed him. 

Ill 

On the long voyage, with steady work 
and assured meals, such as they were, he 
had plenty of time to think. Whoever 
his parents were they must have had good 
instincts and refinement, for by the time 
he reached New York Blutch had deter- 
mined that he had lived a criminal's life 
quite long enough. In fact he had deter- 
mined to be so upright he would lean back- 
ward. He had saved his pay, he bought 
respectable clothes, and he determined to 
find a place to work in the country. He 
adopted the name of Leon Walton, put up 
at a respectable boarding house, and 
watched the New York Herald. 


192 


THE BLANK LETTER 


One day he saw this advertisement: 

“Wanted, a boy in the office of a country 
physician. Apply to X23, Herald office.” 

It was just his chance. He wrote an 
application, and not to lose an opportunity 
said in it that he would be within call of 
the telephone Warren 4162 from eight 
o’clock the next morning till two. His 
promptness pleased the advertiser, who 
called him up at half-past eight and made 
an appointment to meet him at once. 

To his inquiries Leon, as he now thought 
of himself, replied unhesitatingly and 
frankly. He had been brought up in the 
city (he did not say what city), he had a 
fair common school education, he had 
drifted about, but he felt that he wanted 
steady employment, and longed to live 
in the country. Dr. Dunlap was pleased 


THE BLANK LETTER 


193 


with him, did not ask for references, and 
took him home that day. 

Before they had reached Timoleon he 
liked the boy’s sentiments and purposes 
so well that he made him one of the family. 
He found Leon so absolutely trustworthy 
in every way that he began to lean upon 
him, and presently to look upon him as a 
son. He arranged for him to attend the 
high school, where the boy made such a 
record that the good doctor said to him, 
“Leon, I am going to put you through col- 
lege.” As it happened there was a small 
university in the town, so that it was pos- 
sible for Leon to make his courses while 
still caring for Dr. Dunlap’s horse and 
much of his office work. It was a proud 
day for both when Leon was graduated, 
again with distinguished honors. “There 
is nothing you cannot ask of me now,” 


194 


THE BLANK LETTER 


the doctor said, his kindly eyes beaming. 

“I am going to put you to the test,” 
replied Leon. “I have never spoken to 
your daughter of love, but if you sanction 
it I should like to ask her to be my wife.” 

“It is the dearest wish of my heart,” 
was the reply; and upon inquiry it was 
found to be the dearest wish of Cordelia's 
heart too. 

So they were married, and Leon took 
the village school, and kept it even when 
a professorship in the college was offered 
to him. “Some way it seems just my 
work,” he said. His lines had fallen in 
pleasant places. 

In all these years the memory of his 
California life had almost disappeared. 
At first as a matter of caution, afterward 
of habit, he never spoke of the western 
coast or of the ocean. He watched the 


THE BLANK LETTER 


195 


San Francisco newspapers and learned 
that one of the two surviving members 
of the band had been caught and executed; 
w’hile the other like himself had diasppeared 
so absolutely that he was supposed to be 
dead. Probably they thought the same 
of him. How could the fifteen-year old 
Blutch Cuddebac be recognized in Leon 
Walton, college graduate, principal for 
years of the high school in a college town? 
His early days had seemed no longer a 
part of his biography. 

IV 

So this letter addressed to Blutch Cud- 
debac came like lightning out of a clea r 
sky. Who had discovered him under so 
striking an alias? Perhaps the only other 
survivor of the five, Dan Prout, the man 
who really killed the guard. He hoped 
not. It made him shudder to recall that 


196 


THE BLANK LETTER 


relentless countenance. If Dan was after 
him and had found him, the rest of his 
life would be a hell. Apparently it must 
be he. If it had been any one connected 
with the state government the first notice 
would be his arrest. 

Manifestly the letter meant blackmail. 
Should he submit? He could put up quite 
an amount. He had never handled his 
wife’s money. She had received a con- 
siderable inheritance from her father, but 
Leon had refused evep to take charge of 
it. “My salary is enough to support us,” 
he used to say, “and we will safve your 
income for the children.” Even then he 
had put quite a bit aside. He could raise 
at a pHiich five thousand dollars. 

But would it be of any use? The word 
of a blackmailer was of no value. Yield 
to his demand now and he would come 


THE BLANK LETTER 


197 


back with more exacting ones. If it really 
was this Dan Prout there would be no limit. 
Dan could not be scared out by threat of 
exposure as the actual murderer, because 
Leon had no proof except his own state- 
ment, and he was another member of the 
gang, subject to the same punishment, 
actually at this moment in danger of being 
hanged. 

V 

But it was not for himself he shuddered. 
Think of his Cordelia, sole representative 
of the honored family of old Judge Dunlap, 
brought up so tenderly the wind had al- 
ways been tempered for her, gentle soul 
that hardly had known sorrow, delicate 
sense of honor that a breath would sully, 
clinging to her husband’s absolute integrity 
as her anchor in life, what would happen 
to her if she discovered that she was the 


198 


THE BLANK LETTER 


wife of a convicted criminal over whose 
head the halter hung? If there were a 
way to prevent it he must find it. 

And his children, how scrupulous he had 
been that there should be no slightest 
thought or deed in which they might not 
follow his example. How he had prized 
for them the honors that had come to him, 
especially the tributes to his distinguished 
probity. For that matter, how about the 
effect on his pupils to discover that the 
principal whose example had been held 
up before them from childhood was a 
convicted criminal ? 

VI 

Had he been wrong to come to Timo- 
leon? He could not think so: it was his 
one way to build up a substantial moral 
character. He had done that. What- 
ever he may have been as a boy, since he 


THE BLANK LETTER 


199 


came here he had maintained high ideals, 
had lifted them higher every year, had lived 
up to them as far as mortal could hope to. 

Ought he to have married Cordelia? 
If he had supposed that it was conceiv- 
able that after all these years his identity 
could be discovered he would not have 
dreamed of it. All the seven years he had 
lived by her side he had been scrupulous 
not to express or instill a feeling of love. 
It was not till he had become a college 
graduate, with the respect of his fellows 
and the approval of the faculty, that he 
had asked her father for permission to pay 
suit to her. Surely by that time Blutch 
Cuddebac was forgotten. Evidently it 
was unwarranted to marry her, but it was 
an error of judgment. He deplored it but 
he could not feel that he had consciously 
wronged her. 


200 


THE BLANK LETTER 


VII 

Ought he to tell her? If he were sure 
it would become known, yes; he might 
better make it known in his own way 
and in his own time. But even yet it w&s 
not certain she must know. Somebody 
had the secret, but he might not really 
intend to make it known. Dan Prout, 
for instance, would be risking his own 
neck to expose Blutch. Even if he meant 
to do it there might be some slip. The 
blow would be so overwhelming that he 
must lose no possible chance of saving her 
from it. No, he would not tell her till 
it was sure she must know it. 

Once more, should he pay blackmail? 
As his mind came back to this the answer 
was positive — no. The exposure would 
be only delayed. 


THE BLANK LETTER 


201 


VIII 

All this time the letter had lain in his 
hands unopened. He slit the envelope 
and took out the sheet of paper it contained. 
It was absolutely blank. There was not 
even a water-mark on it. It was just a 
sheet of white paper. Both inside and 
outside envelopes were addressed on a 
typewriter. All the letter told was that 
somebody knew who and where he was. 
How that person intended to use the in- 
formation was left to Leon’s imagination. 

There was something in this more terri- 
fying than a threat would have been. 
A sword hung over Leon’s head, but what 
kind of a sword, held by what kind of a 
hair, likely to fall when, could only be 
surmised. 

Care was heavy upon Leon’s heart. 


202 


THE BLANK LETTER 


He affected unusual cheerfulness, but his 
nights were long imaginings of evils. 

IX 

After school one day his preceptress 
said to him, “Mr. Walton, may I make 
myself disagreeable ? ’ ’ 

“How you are playing with the poten- 
tial present,” he replied with an attempt 
at jocularity that had lately seemed fre- 
quent and forced* “You may make your- 
self disagreeable but you can’t.” 

“O yes, I can,” she replied sadly, “and 
I am going to. I am afraid you won’t 
forgive me but I must speak. I have 
never said much about what you and Mrs. 
Walton did for me when my mother died. 
I was very near the jumping-off place 
and you saved me. I was in no condition 
to be effusive, but I had two wishes, that 
no harm might ever come to you two, but 


THE BLANK LETTER 


203 


that if it came I might be where I could 
help.” 

“Pray what harm are you thinking of, 
Miss Milbum?” 

“I don’t know, but I know it is here. 
I know you have not confided in your wife, 
so it must affect her. I know it is breaking 
your heart and keeping you on the rack 
with apprehension. I know if you will 
trust me it will be as safe as if oceans buried 
it. I don’t know whether I can assist you, 
but I know it will help you to tell me 
about it.” 

Impossible as it seemed, Leon did tell 
her, and it did help him. 

There was a Christmas vacation of a 
fortnight. “I am going west,” she said 
“and I want to think it over. Perhaps I 
can suggest something when I return.” 


204 


THE BLANK LETTER 


X 

The night before school reopened Leon 
was called up on the telephone. “I have 
just got back,” Miss Milburn said, “and 
I want very much to see you this evening. 
Can ybu come over?” 

When he entered the room she approach- 
ed him holding out both hands. “Your 
worries are over,” she said. 

“What do you mean?” 

“My vacation trip was to Sacramento. 
There is a pardon of Blutch Cuddebac, 
signed by the governor.” 

Leon looked at it with wondering eyes. 
“How did you get it?” he asked. 

“Without telling your present name or 
address. I took lots of testimonials but 
they were about myself, and I explained 
that it would defeat the purpose of the 
pardon to have your present name and 


THE BLANK LETTER 


205 


position known. I gave only my home 
address, and Timoleon was not mentioned. 
The governor believed me, said that the 
delinquencies of an untaught boy of fif- 
teen should not cloud such a life as you 
have lived since, and not only signed the 
pardon but thanked me for giving him 
an opportunity to do so worthy a deed. 
Incidentally he remarked that if it really 
was Dan Prout that sent you the blank 
letter and if he appears again, he hopes 
you will assist the government authorities 
in getting a clutch on him. He is the one 
man of the five they wanted more than any 
other to lay their hands upon.” 

XI 

But Leon never heard again from his 
anonymous correspondent. If it was Dan 
Prout he must have got word of the pardon. 








Stories about Schools 

By C. W. BARDEEN 
ONE DOLLAR PER VOLUME 
Single Stories 

Roderick Hume. The Story of a New 
York Teacher. 

Commissioner Hume. A Story of New 
York Schools. 

Volumes of Short Stories 

A Single Session, The Vanished Check, 
Eleven to One, The Poisoned Pen, Plot and 
Counterplot, The Face that Followed 

Fifty-five Years Old, Miss Fothergill’s 
Protest, The New Vice-Principal, The 
Alpha Upsilon Society, The Haunted 
Schoolhouse, Miss Trumbull’s Triumph 
( 207 ) 


208 


STORIES ABOUT SCHOOLS 


Geraldine’s Saints, Around the World, 
The Greenleaf Mystery, The President Ex- 
aggerated, A Hot-house Flower, The Stolen 
Regents Paper 

John Brody’s Astral Body, The Teacher- 
ette, Her Mother’s Daughter, In the Clouds 
When Greek meets Greek, Bumptious Bill 

Ruby Floyd’s Temptation, The Tenth 
Commandment, The Hold-Up, A Merry 
Soul, A Matter of Marking, Three Month’s 
Notice 

The Black Hand, Tied and untied, Up- 
per 12, A Lost Identity, A Sensitive Plant, 
By the Campfire 

The Cloak Room Thief, Miss Hoyt, The 
Verbs in Mi, Miss Ripley’s Point of View, 
The Bogus Twenties, The Widow’s Might, 
Commencement Night, Hopelessly Heart- 
less 

The False Entry, Debora’s Defeat, The 
Lightning Calculator, The Dunlap Hat, 
On the Make 

The Girl from Girton, Call no man Hap- 
py, The Bully Bewildered, A Fight to 


STORIES ABOUT SCHOOLS 


209 


Finish, A Story without Names, The Man 
who Couldn’t 

The Shattered Halo, Colonel Bob’s Ex- 
periment, Sandy Sam, The Block Y, A 
Strike and a Spare, The Rockingham 
Rebellion, Downright David, The Spirit 
Summons 

The Stolen Payroll, The Village Tyrant, 
The Little Green Snake, Perchance to 
Dream, Jean Harmon, Brothers Both, 
In the New York Central Station 

The Trial Balance, The Ossahinta Scim- 
itar, The Trouser-Pocket Thief, Put off at 
Buffalo, Tried and Found Wanting, The 
Cashier’s Prophecy 

The Woman Trustee, Without Creden- 
tials, Jot the Janitor, A Masterful Man, 
On a Pedestal, Miss Dusinberrie’s Down- 
fall 

The Yellow Streak, Under Arrest, The 
January Regents, Miss Queroot, How he 
became Professor Piper, A Hireling, The 
Set of Tennyson 


210 


STORIES ABOUT SCHOOLS 


Tom and Tom Tit, On a Tension, Bread 
upon the Waters, A Life for a Life, A Res- 
cue, The Tell-tale Photograph 



* 



















